William Young

When 33-year-old sport-loving William Young moved to Cambridge in 2016, a friend joked that he should take up rowing and presented him with an application form for a local rowing club. By 2023, Will had fallen in love with the sport and was rowing at the National level. He had rowed at Henley Royal Regatta and beaten world-class and Olympic athletes. Life was good on the water.

“But the start of 2024 was when things started to go wrong,” Will explains. “Out of the blue, I developed a DVT (Deep Vein Thrombosis) in my calf. I have no idea why; I was eating well and was very active – training around 20 hours a week.”

In the March of that year, he had a few moments where his chest “felt funny” but he dismissed it as being either under fuelled or dehydrated. But one day while mid-session on the river with his coach, Will’s heart rate increased to 222 beats per minute for 20 minutes. He sat for a few moments before getting himself to the bank and waited for an ambulance to arrive. An ECG was normal but Ventricular Tachycardia (VT) was suspected. VT is a fast heart rhythm; because the heart is beating so quickly, it can’t fill with blood between beats so cannot effectively pump blood around the body. Sustained VT can cause a cardiac arrest, so it was important that Will went to hospital for further investigations. He then learned that he had inflammation on part of his heart.

“I went from hero to zero, and stopped training while I recovered,” Will says.

It was in July that Will then suffered his biggest cardiac event following the end of rowing season celebrations.

“I decided to go for a row at 2am. The river was empty; the water was glassy and there was no wind and nobody else around. I believe the VT happened again – I lost vision, the strength in my arms went and I lost the ability to think. I felt myself rolling sideways – and I couldn’t do anything about it. I came to just before I hit the water,” Will says.

Despite this and when still feeling terrible, Will incredibly managed to row the 100m back to the boathouse where he put his boat away and went to rest on the second floor of the building.

“I’d never felt like that before; I felt weird and weak and had to ‘think’ about walking. I looked down at my chest and could see my sternum moving really fast. I put my heart strap on and, straight away, it showed my heart rate as 227bpm. I rang 999 and told the call handler I was having a serious cardiac event.”

Will says he wasn’t in pain and was in control of his breathing, but when a paramedic from the ambulance service arrived, they immediately called for help because he was at serious risk of going into cardiac arrest. Our Anglia Two (Cambridge) crew, Dr Tim Osborne and Critical Care Paramedic (CCP) Sally Boor, were tasked by critical care car to the scene. Whether by air or road, we bring hospital-level care to the most seriously ill and injured people, on what is probably on the worst day of their lives. Our doctors and paramedics give patients the best chance of survival and recovery and, in the moments when Will needed help the most, support and donations from people like you ensured he received it.

Dr Tim and Critical Care Paramedic Sally cardioverted Will – a procedure to deliver a controlled shock to the heart to try to reset it to a normal rhythm. This treatment is over and above what most land ambulances can deliver. It was necessary for them to do this as quickly as possible at the scene as Will’s blood pressure was still dangerously low and he could go into cardiac arrest at any moment. With advanced medication carried by our crews, they sedated Will so they could carry out the cardioversion procedure. However, Will’s heart briefly stopped, so the crew needed to perform CPR until his heart restarted and he began breathing on his own.

Due to the boat house’s spiral staircase, Will was very carefully extracted over the balcony of the boathouse. This was a huge collaborative effort involving multiple emergency services before he was taken by land ambulance to Addenbrooke’s Hospital, accompanied by Dr Tim and CCP Sally.

“This was the second time I’d needed help from an air ambulance crew, having been airlifted in 2015 after a mountain biking accident in Lancashire,” Will says. “I remember joking about how I’d already been in an air ambulance helicopter!”

Will’s recovery, investigations and treatment are continuing, and the cause of his cardiac events are as yet unknown.

“Pulsed VT is quite rare,” he explains. “I’ve since had an ICD – a small device placed under the skin which can deliver a shock to a heart which is in an abnormal rhythm – fitted as a bit of a safety net, and I’m seeing a specialist at St George’s Hospital in London who works with athletes who have heart problems.”

Will has since suffered with further episodes of VT, “but the ICD did its job,” he adds.

“I’ve always known about East Anglian Air Ambulance, but only later became aware that it was a charity; something I think many people don’t know. The service they provide is unbelievably important – critical in fact.”

And our care doesn’t end when our crew leaves the scene. We’re not just there for the moment of crisis but also for the journey that follows. For patients and families facing the aftermath of a life-changing medical emergency, our Aftercare Team helps navigate the difficult road ahead. This includes being able to facilitate visits to our bases to meet the crew who treated them, which can often be an important part of the recovery process and help to fill in gaps.

Will says, “I have since been able to meet the team from East Anglian Air Ambulance – it was really cool to meet the people who saved my life.”