Health scare gives £1m lottery winner wake-up call

Two months after seeing his bank account climb to more than £1m, Adam Lopez was taken to hospital by ambulance

A lottery winner who became a millionaire three months ago said an eight-day hospital stay was the wake-up call he needed to prioritise his health after three months of "partying".

Adam Lopez, 39, from Mattishall, near Norwich, watched his bank account climb from £12.40 to £1,000,012.40 after buying a winning scratchcard from a corner shop in Hellesdon, in July.

However, on 10 September he was taken to hospital in an ambulance with a bilateral pulmonary embolism.

"I knew what I was doing was going to come to an end eventually, and it nearly came to an end in the worst possible way. It was a massive, massive wake-up call," he said.

Since winning the money in July, he said it had been an "absolute rollercoaster" with him "partying for the last three months" and "burning the candle at both ends".

"It's allowed me to live a bit of a life I've never lived, but I think I went the wrong way about it... it was enjoyable until my health became an issue," he told the BBC.

"It became apparent about three weeks ago... with a blood clot in my leg which spread to my lungs."

Mr Lopez was in the Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital for eight and half days and described the shock as a "kick up the backside".

"I couldn't walk, I couldn't breathe. I rang the ambulance, I got wheeled into the ambulance from my house and the biggest life-changing thing I had, was laying in the back of that ambulance and hearing the sirens," he said.

Adam Lopez says no matter how much money you have, when you are in the back of ambulance none of it matters

Mr Lopez said he could not praise hospital staff enough and felt he was surrounded by angels.

"It just makes you look at both sides of life because it doesn't matter if you have a million, 100 million, a billion, a trillion — when you're in the back of the ambulance, none of it matters."

The 39-year-old said it was "such a hard time" for him and his family, especially his mum.

Shortly after his scratchcard win, he quit his job as a forklift driver.

He said: "I left my job and I never should have done that. I lost the structure to my life and day to day living... it was a complete disconnect from the life I was living."

While his next six to nine months of recovery will include putting his health first, he said by the end of it, he hoped to be "back to the full version of me".