Nonstop partying comes to an end after health incident scares winner straight

By Kate Northrop

A U.K. lottery winner who instantly became a millionaire overnight went from partying for months to spending eight long days in the hospital after a health scare gave him the "wakeup call" he said he needed.

A serious health incident wound a U.K. lottery winner of £1 million (US$1.3 million) in the hospital for eight days, an experience he said he would never forget.

Adam Lopez, 39, experienced a "real pinch me moment" when he saw his bank account skyrocket from £12.40 to £1,000,012.40 in the blink of an eye just three months ago. The forklift driver had won a £1 million prize on a National Lottery scratch-off ticket in July, and it would alter the course of his life in ways he didn't expect.

At the time, he told Lottery officials that he went from driving a forklift at work to driving his dream car, a Range Rover Sport. He also bought his mother a Range Rover Evoque.

"Sadly, we lost my dad eight years ago," Lopez had said to Lottery staff. "He always said that he'd take care of us, and I think in some way this win came from him. So, when I treated myself to my dream car, I knew I had to make mom's dream come true too. Seeing how happy it made her when she got behind the wheel was even better than when I found out I had won."

The good times didn't end there. The happy celebration continued with a family vacation to Barbados for himself, his mother, and his stepfather, even considering the possibility of first-class tickets.

"Never in my wildest dreams did I think this would happen to me," he continued. "I feel so blessed. I've given myself a budget to have fun, a pot to treat people I love and the rest I'm saving for the future."

Lopez didn't expect to be riding in the back of an ambulance two months later.

"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," he said in an interview with the BBC. "It was a massive, massive wake-up call."

On Sept. 10, Lopez was taken to the hospital with bilateral pulmonary embolism, a condition where blood clots block blood vessels in both lungs. After winning the lottery and in the time leading up to then, he said it had been an "absolute rollercoaster," filled with "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 said in his interview. "It became apparent about three weeks ago... with a blood clot in my leg which spread to my lungs."

The eight-and-a-half day stay at Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital was a "kick up the backside," he described the traumatizing event.

"I couldn't walk, I couldn't breathe," the Mattishall resident recalled. "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."

Lopez added he was immensely grateful for hospital staff, telling reporters that he 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," he explained.

The health scare was "such a hard time," not only for him, but for his family — especially his mother.

If there was one more thing that Lopez would have done differently after his lottery win, he would not have quit his job as a forklift driver.

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

It'll be a long road ahead, with a recovery lasting anywhere from six to nine months, but it's a journey he's ready to embark on for the good of his health. It's now become top priority for him, and he's looking forward to getting "back to the full version of me."

(Click to display full-size in gallery)Adam Lopez celebrated way too much after winning £1 million in the UK National Lottery.