Groves was born and brought up in Johannesburg but, aged 19, moved to join Bristol and would help England Under-20s win a Grand Slam. <\/p>\n
As part of Bristol’s pre-season preparations in 2021, Groves and his team-mates underwent cardio screenings unavailable to the public without symptoms. After the tests he was informed he had a leaky valve in his heart.<\/p>\n
The 6ft 9in (2.06m) lock was told it was nothing abnormal, that one in four people have the issue, and that it would just need to be monitored.<\/p>\n
In April 2022 Groves joined Sale Sharks, and during another similar heart screening he was told his situation had deteriorated.<\/p>\n
The view of medical experts was that he would need surgery within the next five years to stop his heart from growing to a size where it would not be able to support itself.<\/p>\n
On 5 January 2024, Groves’ 23rd birthday, he was then told about the discovery of an aneurysm – an abnormal bulge in the wall of a blood vessel – that needed urgent attention.<\/p>\n
“I remember they found the problem in August 2023 and from there it was on and off for a couple of months,” said Groves.<\/p>\n
“I had a test in December and then on my birthday the following year, I went in and saw my surgeon with my parents in Liverpool.<\/p>\n
“Thank God my parents were in that meeting with me because I completely shut off and everything my surgeon told me from that point on I did not take in.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt literally scared the life out of me and I didn’t actually retain any information.<\/p>\n
“I was on the car ride home back to Manchester and my parents were having to relay all the information.\u201d<\/p>\n
He recalled how an initial diagnosis had also been missed because of his unusual height.<\/p>\n
“My surgeon said I could not play because they’d found an aneurysm that they’d missed,” said Groves.<\/p>\n
“That was purely down to the fact MRI machines aren’t really built for six foot nine broad-shouldered people.<\/p>\n
“I remember getting into that machine and sort of squishing up and by doing that, the extra body mass over my heart meant they missed it.<\/p>\n
“But fortunately they found it because one wrong hit to the chest and I would’ve bled out in a matter of seconds because it was on my aortic artery.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Groves was born and brought up in Johannesburg but, aged 19, moved to join Bristol and would help…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":789495,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-789494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789494","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=789494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/789495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=789494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=789494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}