Dermot Bannon reveals holiday health scare as he opens up on suffering pulmonary embolism
The Room To Improve star was on holiday with his family in Portugal for a week during the summer when the incident happened.
Celebrity architect Dermot Bannon has revealed he suffered a pulmonary embolism while on holidays.
The Room To Improve star was on holiday with his family in Portugal for a week during the summer when the incident happened.
Dermot, who returns to our screens tonight with his new RTE One show Dermot Bannon’s Super Spaces, revealed he initially thought he had a broken rib, but doctors in a hospital in Lagos decided to treat him for a lung infection instead.
READ MORE: Dermot Bannon 'too nervous' to talk about new series of Room To Improve
But when he returned home, Dermot explained the pain was still there. He continued to take painkillers until he eventually went to hospital, where they discovered he had a pulmonary embolism in both lungs.
Speaking to Ray D’Arcy on RTE Radio 1, he explained how he had a blood clot, which can prove fatal unless they dissolve.
The Dubliner said: "Things have happened in the last month…it's quite recent.
"During the summer, we went away for a week's holiday, and kind of now, thank God it was only a week's holiday. We went to Portugal. Day number three, I went to the water park with my two lads... Tom's 12 and James is 16, we went on everything, you know, those water slides where the floor drops out of it, as the day went on, and I was tired, but you know, the way you are always tired going on holidays, and I was kind of, I just was putting everything down to just being tired and stressed.
"And that evening, I got back to where we were staying, and I'm going for a quick sit down on the bed, and I was in agony.
"So as the day went on in the water park, I was getting more and more tired. It got to the stage where I asked Tom to carry the rubber ring to get to some of the slides, and I was literally putting it down to old age.
"And got into the bed, and I couldn't lie on my side, couldn't lie on my back, couldn't lie on my front and I was there thinking 'I bet I broke a rib on one of the water slides'.
"So I Googled that and of course, as soon as you Google it, yes, I definitely did, and they want immediate attention. So I was the only one who was insured in the rental car so I drove myself into the hospital in Lagos in Portugal, and I was waiting there for hours, and I was getting really hungry at that stage, because I hadn't eaten, and all I wanted to do was get out of there.
"And when I got seen, they said 'you haven't got a broken rib, we'll do a chest X-ray', and they said, 'you've got a bit of a lung infection'. And I had Covid three weeks before that, so it was all put down to that.
"I got better. The symptoms kind of subsided. We flew home and then a week later - so if I'd gone for two weeks' holidays, I would have still been over there. A week later, the pains came back but more severe, and lying in the bed, four o'clock in the morning, really sharp pains down my side.
"I was pumping Nurofen into myself to try and get rid of them. Got up the next day and I went up to our health insurer's clinics. And I went up to there, and she said, 'yeah, you have a bit of a lung infection, it hasn't cleared up, but there could be something a bit more sinister'.
"I'd like to go and get a blood test done. She wasn't 100 per cent sure. And I said, 'Grand. Next week?' She says, 'No, maybe now'.
"I went in by myself, because I said I'd be home in half an hour. Anyway, they did the blood test, and it showed up that there might be some clotting going on and then they hooked me up too, and they did a CT scan immediately, and I had what was known as a pulmonary embolism, which was a blood clot, that came from my leg and had worked his way up in my lungs, in both lungs and if I had kept going and ignoring it and taking Nurofen that was restricting blood flow.
"Like a little part of my lung has died because the blood flow has been restricted, that's not significant enough to worry about, but that was only getting worse and worse and worse.
"And what happens if you don't spot or if you don't do something, the pressure in your heart can cause a cardiac arrest because this oxygen is restricted."
Dermot said he felt "wrecked" the morning he went into the hospital, but the 52-year-old put it down to having done a spin class at his gym that morning.
"You can die from it? It’s a clot and unless they dissolve, they're blocking oxygen going to your everywhere and the pressure can build up, because your heart has to work so much to try and pump oxygen around. So if you've got loads and loads of clots, and your heart is working really hard, it's kind of like the same as the blockage in one of your valves."
Dermot's dad had a major heart attack when he was 50 and as a result, Dermot makes a point to regularly exercise and is mindful of the food he eats.
"Dad had a big heart attack when he was 50, and because of that, I watch my food, I watch, I'm always doing a bit of exercise. I'm generally really good."
Dermot is now on blood thinners, but he has yet to find out if he will be on them for life.
Dermot talks about the warning signals to look out for in the hopes that it might be a warning for someone listening.
Ray asked if it has changed Dermot's outlook on life. Dermot said he only wants to do things he enjoys.
Dermot added: "I'm still at the early stages of this, and I have to go back for all the assessments in the next couple of months, and they'll tell me then what could have been, whether I'm going to be on medication for the rest of my life, whether, and that's the thing, is that it's very difficult, if they've solved it and saved my life, potentially, to take me off the tablets so I could be on blood thinners for the rest of my life.
"I work on building sites. You get cuts, you get nicks, you fall over. I can't do that. I can't go skiing, because you can hit your head. Anything that might cause bruising is dangerous."
Episode 1 of Dermot Bannon's Super Spaces starts tonight on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player at 9:35pm. The second episode airs on Wednesday September 11
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