Brian May feared he was going to die when he was hospitalised following a heart attack.
The Queen rocker was admitted to hospital in May after what he initially believed was a severe muscle injury he had suffered while gardening - and required three stents in his heart due to the cardiac episode.
However, the 73-year-old reacted badly to medication and suffered a stomach haemorrhage, and he has now revealed that at one point he worried he was going to die.
"It was shocking," he said during an interview with U.K. TV show Good Morning Britain. "That's the point where I nearly lost my life - not the heart attack strangely enough. If anybody wants to talk about it, get in touch with me.
"You have to be so careful with the medication that they give you. It's great for the stents, it's great for the heart, it's not very good for the rest of your body and you can really go down. It's a tightrope you walk."
The star is now undergoing extensive rehabilitation - a process he believes is going well.
"It was pretty bad and the complications that came after were pretty bad. It's been a big mountain to climb to get up to strength again. But it's become my new religion really; I just exercise, I do my cardio rehab every day and I'm getting strong," he shared. "I'm very grateful. I had a wonderful surgeon. I'm so grateful to be alive. A few years ago that couldn't have happened. I have three stents in me, which are working just fine. I feel good."
The We Are the Champions musician added: "The worst thing that happened was a stomach haemorrhage and I lost an awful lot of blood. I was wiped out, couldn't get across the floor. I had a bad time all round.
"A catalogue of disasters, sciatica as well. I'm not quite sure how I got that. The pain from that was so excruciating I couldn't really go through with the operation at first for the stents. The actual heart operation was a doddle compared to the sciatica. But I'm good!"
