A talented boxer and dad to five children feared for his life after an innocuous gym session left him with a sudden brain bleed. In December, athlete Nathan Wagg fell unconscious on the floor of a gym after a gentle warm-up.
Only two months earlier he had been named a silver super lightweight boxing champion in an H46pro Boxing League competition. The 34-year-old from Murrow, Cambridgeshire, had a bleed to the brain caused by a rare tangle of brain blood vessels he was born with called an arteriovenous malformation (AVM).
Within a few days of his fainting episode, he endured seven hours of brain surgery to relieve the pressure that was causing him unimaginable pain. Nathan then gained over 50 staples to his skull to close the incision from his open brain surgery.
