QUEEN's BRIAN MAY Is 'Grateful To Be Alive' After Heart Attack And Stomach Hemorrhage

Brian May says he feels "grateful" to be alive after suffering a heart attack, a stomach hemorrhage and other health complications this year.

The QUEEN guitarist appeared on Tuesday's (October 27) episode of "Good Morning Britain" where discussed his terrifying health ordeal.

"It was pretty bad, and the complications that came after it were pretty bad," he said (see video below). "So it's been a big mountain to climb to get back to strength again, but it's become my new religion, really. I do my cardio rehab every day, and I'm getting strong. I'm gonna be Iron Man soon.

"I had a wonderful, wonderful surgeon, and I'm so grateful to be alive. 'Cause a few years ago, that couldn't have happened. I had three stents in me" — referring to short, wire-mesh tubes that act like a scaffold to help keep an artery open — "which are working just fine, and I feel good."

As for the stomach explosion, the 73-year-old said: "That was the point where I nearly lost my life, actually — not the heart attack, strangely enough.

"You have to be so careful with the medication that they give you, because it's great for the stents, it's great for the heart, but it's not very good for the rest of your body, and you can really go down. So it's a tightrope.

"The worst thing that happened was the stomach hemorrhage, and I lost an awful lot of blood all at one time and just was wiped out," he added. "I couldn't move, I couldn't get across the floor. So that was the worst point for me. But I had a bit of a bad time all around. It sounds amusing, really. A catalog of disasters. 'Cause I had sciatica as well, and I'm not quite sure how I got that. But the pain from that was so excruciating, I couldn't really go through the operation at first. The actual heart operation was a doddle compared to the sciatica."

A few days ago, May told The Express that he thought coronavirus was to blame for his health scare because he was "the fittest person on that last QUEEN tour we did” and "didn't tick any of the boxes to get a heart attack."

"I have one theory, which is: I'm conscious that I had a pretty bad cough most of the way through that tour. And some of the time I felt pretty grim and I thought I was just feeling tired," he said.

"I think it's possible that I had the COVID virus early on in the tour of Korea, Japan and Australia in January, and got through it, but it's thickened the blood, which apparently it does, and that could have been the trigger that gave me the heart attack.

"I thought it was too early to get it [COVID] but the evidence now seems to be that the virus was around," May added.

Brian also thanked his wife Anita Dobson for saving his life.

"She was incredible," he said. "She totally saved my life because I couldn't do anything and she just kind of nursed me, so I will forever be in her debt. She did an incredible job on me."