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Blackburn Rovers shot-stopper Paul Robinson has spoken out about his fear of death during an illness which left him with a blood clot on his lung, Mirror Football reports.
The 33-year-old suffered a blockage in the artery next to his lung soon after going under the knife for a back injury picked up by him during last years campaign.
The former England international cheated death due to club doctor Duncan Robertson’s timely intervention.
On his return to hospital doctors told him that the illness could be fatal. “It was a Sunday night and my chest started getting really tight and I started coughing up blood,” said Robinson.
“Our lads were away at Cardiff and I phoned the doc and said something is not right.
“He said, just to make sure, to pop down to my local A and E. So he sent me down with a diagnosis and text message and told me to give it to the doctor and they’d do all the checks.
“I was there for a couple of hours and they sent me home as they said I was all right because it was just where they had put the tubes down my throat for my back operation.
“But that night I was getting more and more chest pains and the next morning I was coughing up a lot more blood. I just felt like I had a huge man stood on my chest.
“So I had the sense to phone the doc back again and he said ‘That’s not right’ and told me to get back to the hospital.
“But as I was going back, he phoned and told me to go to Leeds General Infirmary because it was Easter Monday and they would have the people there to look after me.
“’Am I going to die?’ was my first question. I was told ‘yes’, you could have died, but ‘no’ you’re not because we’ve caught it this early.
“The doc at Blackburn was brilliant. For him to diagnose it over the phone like he did, I’m very grateful to him.”
The illness put him out of action for six months and the keeper confessed that he felt like “90-year-old smoker with asthma” due to the after effects of Warfarin which was used to thin his blood in order to make the clot disappear.
“For the first couple of months, I literally couldn’t do anything,” he said.
“I’d get out of breath just walking up stairs, it was quite scary really. My nan is 92 and she came round to see me. I went for a walk outside and she came with me, but was streets ahead of me.
“It was a bit scary, a bit surreal. I felt like a 90-year-old smoker with asthma.”
The ex-Tottenham keeper is hoping to get a clean bill of health soon so that he can make his first start for Blackburn since December.
“I’ve done my running and work in the gym and I’ve started my own pre-season programme,” he said.
“I’ve had the gloves on a couple of times before, but now I can dive around and it feels great.”
