SWINE flu almost killed this healthy Valleys 28-year-old.

But specialist lung treatment in Leicester saved his life and he is now at home recovering in Tredegar.

Gareth Thomas spent two weeks on an ExtraCorporeal Membrane Oxygenation machine, which used an artificial lung to oxygenate the blood outside his body.

His family feared they would lose him and he remembers little of his three-week illness because he was drifting in and out of consciousness.

Mr Thomas started showing flu symptoms on September 2 - three days after returning from a holiday to Bulgaria.

He carried on working as a plumber but felt achey and weak and visited an out-of-hours doctor on September 5, who told him he had a kidney infection and prescribed antibiotics.

His temperature rose to 40 degrees and he could not sleep because he was constantly coughing so two days later he visited his GP, who also said he was suffering from a kidney infection.

On September 9 his GP admitted him to Abergavenny’s Nevill Hall Hospital for chest x-rays and discovered pneumonia had developed in his lungs – caused by swine flu.

He was put on a ventilator in intensive care, but his lungs were too weak and the next day he was transferred to Leicester’s Glenfield Hospital for ECMO treatment.

Mr Thomas spent a fortnight unconscious on the ECMO machine and suffered regular fits.

His heart stopped seven times and he had a temporary pacemaker fitted.

His parents Lorraine and Norman, siblings, Karen, Sian and Ian, and girlfriend Sian Turner, 22, stayed in a flat at the hospital so they could be with him.

Miss Turner said: "It was a horrible couple of weeks but it was a massive relief when he was taken off the machine and we realised he was going to be all right.

The ECMO treatment was brilliant, that’s what saved his life."

Mr Thomas said: "When I woke up I couldn’t believe what had happened to me. I had no memory of being in the hospital and I was so shocked at how bad it had got because I'd been fit and healthy."

He was transferred to the Royal Gwent Hospital for a week before returning home on September 24.

He is still off work because he is too weak to lift things, but is hoping to return to plumbing after Christmas.

There are three other ECMO centres in the United Kingdom, at Newcastle’s Freeman Hospital, Glasgow’s Royal Hospital for Sick Children and London’s Great Ormond Street, but Glenfield, the largest in Europe, is the only centre to treat adults.

It has treated a number of patients with swine flu and since Mr Thomas’ treatment the number of ECMO machines has doubled to ten.

BLOB: The Assembly announced yesterday that a seventh person in Wales has died from swine flu.

There has also been a swine flu death of a Welsh person abroad, but no more details are being released