I’m 28-year-old TV star with no health problems but I was left fighting for my life and taking the ‘drug of doom’

STUCK in bed after being struck down by the flu, Claudia Smith had no idea that she would be fighting for her life in just a few days time.

The healthy 28-year-old, who rose to fame on reality show Absolutely Ascot, knew something was seriously wrong when she started struggling with agonising chest pains, but she could never have predicted the sinister twist that was about to happen.

Speaking for the first time about her ordeal, Claudia – who is now an influencer and performer – recalled how she was initially sent home from the doctor, who told her it was a particularly strong strain of Covid.

A few days later Claudia was still in bed but things got worse.

She explained: “I woke up with chest pains and I thought at first ‘is this an anxiety attack?’  Then I had about four more episodes of it that morning. It literally felt like your whole torso was shuddering,  it was the worst pain I’ve ever felt.”

She made it to her local GP and it soon became apparent that she needed to be rushed to hospital.

Claudia recalled: “I pretty much gave the doctor a heart attack. He was like ‘none of the machines are reading you and I can’t read your pulse,  I can’t read your blood pressure. I literally can’t read anything’. So he called an ambulance and I was blue-lighted to hospital.”

She was taken out of the surgery on a stretcher and it was a ‘frantic’ six minute drive to A&E, where she was met by a resus team. 

She continued: “They had to tip me upside down because they couldn’t get my bloods at all- they couldn’t get any cannulas in or anything because they couldn’t find any veins and it just wasn’t working. It was absolutely awful.”

It was then Claudia was told she was having an SVT attack.

Supraventricular tachycardia is a condition where your heart suddenly beats much faster than normal. 

From then, Claudia continued to have attacks, telling us: “I was going in and out of it. So I could sometimes talk to the doctors around me, but most of the time I was just trying to concentrate on my breathing because I’d get myself into a rhythm and if I was controlling my breathing I could make myself come out of it.

“I thought I was going to die multiple times. It’s weird because you kind of put yourself in a zone. You’ve got no choice, you can’t panic because otherwise that is it.

The medics made the decision to give her a drug called adenosine to help regulate her heart, which she later found out people refer to as the ‘drug of doom’ because of the horrendous side effects, most notably the a sense of impending doom.

Claudia believes it was the Covid and being so poorly that triggered her attacks and she is currently awaiting a cardiology appointment.

She has learnt that is very uncommon in people her age, but through social media she’s created a whole community of people who are supporting each other through the same thing. 

She shared: “It’s been real comfort and the best thing to come out of this.”

In the meantime she’s gone back to work – she works for Warner Bros as part of the Harry Potter studio tour. She also dresses up for Princess parties and has appeared as an elf for Lapland UK. 

She gave up fame in 2019 after two series on ITV show Absolutely Ascot -a  constructed reality TV show – made by the same people behind Towie and The Real Housewives of Cheshire, which followed the lives of people in the area.

The show caused a bit of a furore as it emerged most of the cast weren’t actually from there.

Speaking about her time on it, Claudia said: “I enjoyed the first one and the novelty of it. It was amazing. I’ve had a lot of opportunities that have come from it as well.”

Claudia was an instant hit – and when her then boyfriend, Gary Ball, was added to the cast, it became a huge storyline.

The pair were each other’s first loves and Gary even had plans to propose to her – but it all fell apart, leaving bad blood between him and her whole family.

She went on to find love with a man called Luke White and the pair married earlier this year. 

Reflecting on everything that has happened, Claudia said: “This year has obviously just been an absolute whirlwind, a real roller coaster of emotions . I’m just happy to still be here.”