I went into cardiac arrest swimming out at sea – thanks to my friend, my kids didn’t lose their dad on Father’s Day

A father-of-two who suffered cardiac arrest while 200 metres out to sea on Father’s Day 2025 is planning a pier-to-pier swim to mark the anniversary alongside the friend who saved his life.

Eliot Lamb, 55, has been sea swimming every weekend for six years, but a Sunday morning like any other on June 15, 2025 turned into a medical emergency that could have taken his life.

While swimming around 200 metres off the coast of Southsea, Portsmouth, Eliot went into cardiac arrest – despite having no warning signs or heart health issues before – and the quick thinking of his swimming partner Marcel and a bystander on the beach meant that he made a full recovery.

On June 27, Eliot and Marcel will return to the sea to swim 1.4 miles pier-to-pier in Bournemouth to fundraise for the British Heart Foundation in recognition of his fateful experience a year prior.

Eliot, who is father to Oscar, 16, and Siena, 14, has no memory of the incident.

“I have no memory of waking up in the morning and driving to the beach, no memory of getting to the beach, and there was no pain or distress, no warning signs of any problem,” Eliot, who lives in Southampton and works as a case manager for people who have had brain injuries, told PA Real Life.

“I went into the sea with my friend Marcel, who I’ve known for over 20 years – we’re really, really good friends. Luckily he was with me, because we were swimming around the pier at Southsea – it’s quite deep – and I’ve been told I just passed out in the water.

“He grabbed hold of me, then swam me to the shore. Luckily he’s a strong swimmer.”

Once back on the beach at Southsea, Marcel and a bystander performed CPR on Eliot for around 18 minutes while waiting for the ambulance to arrive. They would have used the public defibrillator on the beach, but it was not where it should have been – a problem that could have proved fatal for Eliot.

According to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), fewer than one in 10 people in the UK survive an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.

However, immediate initiation of CPR can double or quadruple survival rates, while defibrillation within three to five minutes of collapse can produce survival rates up to 50-70%.

When the ambulance and Air Ambulance arrived, paramedics delivered four shocks to Eliot before sedating him and taking him by road to Queen Alexandra Hospital, Portsmouth.

There, he remained in an induced coma for 30 hours, with his ex-wife by his side, but when he came round he appeared to be suffering cognitive side effects that could have been from the medication, or from his brain being starved of oxygen during the cardiac arrest.

At first, his speech was slurred and incomprehensible, and he was confused: “I thought I was at work,” he said.

“I used to work in a hospital as an occupational therapist, and I was going up to patients, apparently, saying ‘I’m Eliot, if you need any help, I’m just over there in the corner’.”

After around a week of initial recovery, Eliot had three stents fitted in his coronary arteries to widen them, and then was assessed by an occupational therapist about his cognition.

He said it took “a good few days” after he came out of the induced coma for him to begin making new memories again.

“I did some cognitive tests, and I struggled to start with, but then as time went on, I got a lot better, and I was back to sort of normal cognition, I would say,” he said.

“It was quite interesting, that whole total lack of memory – a lot of the clients I work with have that, but often to a much larger degree,” he added.

“It gave me a bit of a glimpse (into what they’re going through).”

On July 8, he had a second surgery to fit an internal defibrillator, which checks his heart rhythm constantly and can deliver electrical pulses or shocks if the rhythm becomes abnormal.

Since then, the defibrillator has not been activated and he feels in good health, meaning he has beaten the odds as an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survivor.

However, Eliot has decided to take part in some genetic testing to see if his cardiac issue is hereditary, particularly mindful of his teenage children.

“I’d always thought I’d have a cardiac problem, because both of my granddads died of heart attacks in their mid-fifties, and then my dad had a heart attack when he was 52 but survived and is now 78,” he explained.

“I always thought I’m probably predisposed, so I told the cardiologist and I was referred to the genetics team at Southampton General Hospital to see if there was a genetic component. That’s in progress, I haven’t had any results yet.”

While Marcel was back to sea swimming around a week after the incident, Eliot heeded his doctors’ advice and rested for three months before he got back to exercise. Since he has no memory of his illness, he said he had no fear of returning to swimming, but said he would not go alone.

In June 2026, to mark the anniversary of his cardiac arrest, Eliot and Marcel will take to the sea at Bournemouth for the British Heart Foundation’s pier-to-pier swim.

The open-water event covers a distance of 1.4 miles from Boscombe Pier to Bournemouth Pier, and while the pair swam the route around five years ago, Eliot said this year’s swim carries additional weight.

In addition to fundraising for the British Heart Foundation, Eliot hopes to raise awareness of the importance of public defibrillators – particularly as there was not one available when he needed it most.

He also wishes more people knew CPR, and encourages everyone to learn through the British Heart Foundation’s free, online RevivR course – which takes just 15 minutes.

“I think it’s a life skill that everyone should have,” Eliot said.

“None of us know what’s around the corner, and each moment is precious – you can’t take things for granted. That’s my key takeaway from all this.”