The Wanted’s Max George Wrote Will from Hospital Bed Before Pacemaker Operation ArticlePure

Max George of The Wanted has revealed that he wrote a will on his phone while hospitalized for what he previously called heart “issues.”

The 36-year-old musician, who recently revamped the boy band as duo The Wanted 2.0 with fellow member Siva Kaneswaran, shared in late December that he had a pacemaker fitted after an operation. Now, he’s detailed his health scare in a Jan. 11 interview with The Sun.

“That first night I wrote a will, I thought I was going to die,” he revealed.

As George recalls, he woke up freezing with blue hands on Dec. 11, after he “hadn’t been feeling myself for a few days” following a tour. “I couldn’t put my finger on it,” he told The Sun. “I was quite lethargic and stuff, struggling to get out of bed. But I didn’t think it was anything serious.”

“Luckily I’d gone around to my mum’s to stay and I woke up and I remember looking at my hands and they were blue, and my arms were a grey color and I was freezing cold,” he added. “I struggled to even sit up in bed.”

After George’s mother saw him, she decided it was time to call a doctor. Following a checkup, George called another friend and doctor who advised him to seek further care.

“At this point I had a panicky feeling, but was also just absolutely knackered,” he said. “I couldn’t move my arms and the worst feeling was I felt like my throat was closing up. It felt like someone had their hands around my neck. Thank God I stayed at Mum’s house — she saved my life.”

The singer was then informed by doctors that something was “not right with the bottom part” of his heart and told he’d need a pacemaker. “For some reason the rhythm is way off and the signal doesn’t seem to be getting from the top chamber of your heart to the bottom part, the bit that pumps the blood around your body,” he recalled being told. “I was in complete shock.”

“It was really scary, all sorts is going on in your head, and certainly not a place I thought I’d be in at 36,” he added. “I was awake all night, feeling a closing in my throat, I was really struggling to move and had really deep, slow breaths. There was nothing that they could do to stop that. I could have lived maybe a few weeks, maybe a few months, but it could have been a few hours. We didn’t know.”

After two days in the hospital, George’s heart rate dropped to 26 beats per minute, in comparison to a standard heart rate of 60 to 100. The “worst day,” he said, came on Dec. 13, when his “heart rate and my blood pressure dropped at the same time.”

He was then taken for a CT scan on Dec. 15, later getting his pacemaker surgery three days later. The operation took around three hours, he recalled, and the surgery was “grim,” since he was conscious but heavily sedated. His partner Maisie Smith was there as he became aware of his surroundings, George remembered.

“I had a proper heartbeat by then as well. My heart rate started just shooting up. So I remember feeling my feet going tingly, because I think obviously the blood started to properly pump around,” he told The Sun.

“I was like, ‘Holy s—, I feel alive again,’ like it was a really nice feeling. It’d been so hard being away from Maisie, but she climbed on the bed, obviously she lay on the other side of my chest to my op, and put her head on me. We just had a cuddle for a couple of hours while I talked about football and we treated it like normal. I could feel butterflies again next to her,” he said.

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George first announced his pacemaker fitting via Instagram on Dec. 21, calling it “the best Christmas present” in a message to fans. He previously revealed days earlier that he was hospitalized after feeling “really unwell.”

As he encouraged followers to “say hello to my little friend” post-surgery, The Wanted vocalist revealed he had the operation done “just underneath a very special tattoo of mine” — ink that read “04.08.1998,” an apparent reference to his late bandmate Tom Parker’s birthday.

“I’m sure it’s being looked after ?,” George wrote at the time. “Few more tests to do due to inflamed lymph nodes on my lungs, but that’ll be easy work! ?? Time to rest and then tackle life full on once again ??. Thank you for all your support. It’s meant a hell of a lot to myself and my family.”