BGT star rushed to hospital with ‘life-threatening illness’ hours before final

2022-11-19

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A Britain's Got Talent star was "rushed to hospital" hours before live final with a "life-threatening illness".

Tom Ball, a talented school teacher from West Sussex, was competing in this year's BGT final (June 2022) when he was rushed to A&E hours before he was due to take to the stage.

The 24-year-old singing sensation has Type 1 diabetes and was suffering from ketoacidosis at the time.

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Ketoacidosis is a potentially fatal complication of Type 1 diabetes, where the body doesn't have enough insulin to break down sugar into energy.

The diabetic ketoacidosis information page on the NHS website states that: "DKA is an emergency and needs to be treated in hospital immediately."

A few days before the live final, Tom, who has been hospitalised for his condition around eight times before, "started feeling horrendous".

He recently revealed to The Sun that a matter of hours prior to his performance he was "feeling really sick and just completely drained".

Tom added that he was sitting in bed and attempting to get his ketones under control when he and his wife became worried.

The young couple called NHS 111 and were told to go straight to hospital because he was unable to get his ketones under control by himself.

"For me to go, it had to be serious," he told the paper.

After going to A&E with his wife, Hannah, who is a nurse, he was admitted and had two hours of medical care.

Keeping positive ahead of the final was "really hard" for the singer, but luckily at 4am he was discharged and went home.

Getting straight back into rehearsals – despite ketoacidosis usually taking days to recover from – Tom didn't want to let his health condition prevent him from performing.

"I really didn't want any kind of excuses put out there if my performance was bad or didn't go to plan," he said.

Tom ended up placing third out of 11 acts, with the star dubbing his experience as "life-changing".

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