Fighting for life

“I’m a glutton for punishment. I don’t know why,” grins boxer Dan Sarkozi when asked what encouraged him to take up his chosen sport. “I probably could have put the same effort into a different career and be earning a lot more money, but I’m doing what I love so I guess that’s richer in many more ways.”

Having grown up in Windmill Hill, Dan started at Empire Amateur Boxing Club when he was 16, undertaking 50 amateur fights around the UK and Ireland. Five years ago, at the age of 24, he turned pro with legendary manager and promoter Chris Sanigar.

Dan rose through the ranks and was training harder than ever for the biggest fight of his career with the former commonwealth champion Bradley Pryce when, in November 2017, the ultra-fit fighter was felled in the Empire gym by something no-one saw coming.

Dan with manager Chris Sanigar (left)

“It started with slurred speech,” Dan recalls. “It just sounded like I’d had a skinful on a Saturday night. I could tell and sort of smirked to myself – why did I slur those words? But when I tried to rearticulate myself it got worse and worse. Eventually it was just a noise coming out of my mouth. Then I felt one side of my face drop and my right hand melted in on itself and my head went a bit tingly. I thought to myself, ‘these are stroke symptoms,’ – I was familiar with the FAST campaign. I tried to say to my mate, ‘I think I’m having a stroke,’ but I couldn’t talk. It was a little bit panicky – I knew it was happening, but I couldn’t tell anyone.”

Dan’s manager drove him to the Bristol Royal Infirmary, where an MRI scan confirmed he had suffered a stroke. He discharged himself feeling fine, but a couple of hours later returned after experiencing the symptoms again. “I think it was worse that time,” Dan says. “Even then, I didn’t realise how serious it was. Being a boxer, you’re always brushing off injury, trying to get on with your life but it slowly started to dawn on me as each day went by.”

His stroke was diagnosed as having been caused by a hole between the upper chambers of his heart, something found in around one in four people, most of whom are not affected. “I’m literally Mr Healthy, but it’s a genetic thing: you’re born with a hole in your heart and it could happen to anyone. I personify that,” he says.

https://www.facebook.com/DanSarkoziBoxer/videos/2181552525450635/

Back at home in Easton, Dan began a long road to discovering his previous strength. “For about a month, just walking round the block I’d get dizzy,” he says. “I went from running 5k every morning, and training hard five or six hours every day, five days a week, to being dizzy from walking. It was an instant change but it took me a while to realise it.”

During this time, Dan was on a year-long NHS waiting list for heart surgery to have the hole repaired. “That was a bit touch-and-go because there are different types of hole in the heart,” Dan says. “One isn’t funded on the NHS for the closure surgery, but the other is. At first they thought I couldn’t have surgery.” It turned out that Dan did have the ‘right’ type of hole in his heart to qualify, returning to the BRI for the operation on October 15 2018: a year to the day that he was last in a boxing ring.

On heavy medication and unable to train, Dan spent his recovery reading more into the decision of the NHS not to offer surgery for both types of holes in the heart. It hasn’t been routinely offered since 2013, despite the operation costing just £5,360 more than medicating the patient, and having the potential to reduce the chances of having a secondary stroke by almost 80 per cent – according to a groundbreaking 2017 study.

Keen to do something, Dan began channeling all the energy he had for training to campaigning: setting up a government petition, contacting his local MP, and meeting young people who have experienced a stroke but are not eligible for surgery, putting them at significant risk of further debilitating strokes.

Dan is now back in the boxing gym and planning his sporting comeback

Several months on from heart surgery and finally off the blood-thinning medication, Dan once again is training flat-out again, desperate to get back in the ring and continue his boxing career. “I’m trying to get back to how my life was,” he says. “I was a week away from my biggest fight. You work your whole life to become an overnight success in boxing and 2018 was meant to be my year. I just want to put it all behind me and move on.

“All of the doctors have said that I shouldn’t be at any greater risk after all this than beforehand. I just need to go through the British Boxing Board of Control. They are very stringent. That’s going to be the last hurdle, getting written consent from the doctors. That might be tricky.”

It’s a frustrating position to be in, feeling that a signature on a piece of paper could decide the fate of your life. “I like boxing so much because your destiny is in your own hands,” Dan says. “When you’re in the ring you’ve got these two -” he raises his fists – “and they either do it for you or they don’t. There’s no one else to blame.”

Sign Dan’s government petition to fund closure operations on the NHS by visiting www.petition.parliament.uk/petitions/230666. Follow Dan’s boxing comeback at www.facebook.com/DanSarkoziBoxer

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