Despite his consultant’s grim assessment, medication and regular check-ups helped Rhys defy their prognosis. <\/p>\n
He lived a relatively normal life, playing rugby and football in his childhood, before passing his GCSEs and starting work. <\/p>\n
But in 2011 he started feeling weak and tired, looked pale and suffering from dizziness, headaches and regular chest infections.<\/p>\n
Then, at the age of 25, he was told he would need a heart transplant. <\/p>\n
“This was a huge shock. I had grown up knowing that a transplant was the only ‘solution’ for my heart condition but as a family, we never spoke about it,” he added.<\/p>\n
“We didn’t think it would really happen. I remember sobbing in my bed, thinking that this shouldn’t be happening to a 25-year-old.”<\/p>\n
He underwent his first heart transplant in October 2011, but just five months later, narrowing was discovered in his arteries. <\/p>\n
Rhys still did not slow down and eight weeks after having three stents fitted he was climbing Yr Wyddfa, or Snowdon. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite his consultant’s grim assessment, medication and regular check-ups helped Rhys defy their prognosis. He lived a relatively…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":650261,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-650260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=650260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650260\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/650261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=650260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=650260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}