THE only thing as amazing as the defibrillator inside of Tom Lockyer is his own mental fortitude to keep going with a smile on his face.
The Luton Town star shockingly collapsed on the pitch after suffering a cardiac arrest in December of last year.
Lockyer was playing against Bournemouth in the Premier League when he fell to the ground and was rushed to hospital.
Now just a matter of months after the scare, the 29-year-old is opening up about the incident and showing the world his new ICD.
An ICD (Implantable cardioverter-defibrillator) is an implanted tool to help restart the heart instantly if Lockyer was to suffer a similar cardiac arrest in the future.
The ICD sits underneath the defender’s skin on his side and runs a wire across his chest and up to his heart in case it needs to go off and help the Welshman.
He told Sky Sports: “It’s constantly monitoring my heart rate and if it goes outside certain parameters it’s designed to give me a shock.”
He added: “I think the battery lasts ten years, so it only needs changing every ten years.
“Hopefully I’m never going to need it, but it’s there as a precaution.”
Lockyer is in good spirits after being able to return to the world of football in recent weeks.
He headed back to the Luton training ground last month and was part of the Sky Sports punditry team for the Luton vs Man Utd game on Sunday.
It’s a long way from that terrifying moment on the pitch at the Vitality Stadium and Lockyer is indescribably grateful for the doctors and medical staff who helped him that day.
He explained to the BBC that he was “technically dead” for almost three minutes.
He said: “Two minutes and 40 seconds I was I was technically dead for.
“Without the people there who were incredible under the pressure I wouldn’t be here today.”
And although he is pleased to be moving back to normality he has admitted that his new ICD implant has been a learning curve.
He explained: “It took a while to get used to because it’s a lot bigger than I thought it would be.”
Before joking that the big things aren’t changing, saying: “It doesn’t affect my golf swing – I’m still rubbish so I’m alright.”
