A man who credits the NHS with saving his life four times has expressed his enormous gratitude to frontline staff.

Tony Clarke, 81,  has been having regular scans over the last ten years to monitor an aortic aneurysm in his abdomen. Things had been stable up until recently, when a scan showed the aneurysm had significantly grown.

"Over the last few weeks I’ve had a stressful personal problem. On December 3 I started to have a lot of pain and throbbing, pulsations in my stomach,” said Tony.

"I couldn’t get any answer on 111, so I went into the minor injuries unit at Liskeard."

Staff identified straight away that the aneurysm  had started to bleed - giving limited time to act to halt a life-threatening situation.

"I was in a bit of a state. The team did their utmost to stabilise me, and called an ambulance which came as fast as it could, and they blue lighted me to hospital. I’ve never travelled so fast from Liskeard to Derriford in my life.

"The ambulance crew did a magnificent job caring for me until we arrived at hospital where there was a team waiting to to continue with my treatment."

Tony says that the NHS has been “keeping him alive since 1988”, when he had to have emergency surgery for diverticulitis.

Then in the late 90s, while working as a lorry driver, there was a time when he suddenly felt very ill while driving a full petrol tanker on the motorway. 

"I managed to pull over onto the hard shoulder and get out of the cab, then I collapsed," he says.

"The motorway police found me quite quickly. I had to have my gall bladder removed."

In 2011, The Cornish Times featured Tony on its front page after a cardiac arrest left him with three minutes to live, according to the paramedics who attended the scene in Seaton in July of that year. 

Now following his fourth close call, Tony is set to return hospital this week for surgery to repair the aneurysm.

He hopes that his experiences may serve as encouragement to others to minimise their stress levels.

“I know this is not always easy to do, and sometimes not within our ability to control,” he says.

“But my consultants have told me that all the medical conditions I have suffered can be aggravated  by an unusually high level of stress.

“I did not realise just how serious stress can be and the impact it can have.”

Tony has also been moved by his experience in Liskeard to write to Debbie Richards, chief executive of the Cornwall Partnership NHS Trust, to praise the people that helped him.

He’s also written to the Secretary of State for Health to criticise the pressures on frontline NHS staff that “make it so difficult for them to do their jobs”. He says that after first being admitted to Derriford, he spent 11 hours on a trolley because there were no beds free.

Tony, who’s from Menheniot, has made a donation to Liskeard Community Hospital as a token of his gratitude.

In his letter to the chief executive he writes: “The calm professionalism, care and kindness shown to me by everyone involved was very reassuring. At one stage I really thought my time had come, but the team at Liskeard really do deserve some recognition for keeping me stable and finding an emergency contact on my mobile phone to take care of things at my home.

“I will always remember the wonderful people who kept me going and made it possible for me to write this letter!”