Man cheated death after condition made him 'cholesterol making machine'

A 34-year-old man had a quintuple heart bypass surgery to save his life after a rare condition made him a “cholesterol-making machine”.

Simarjot Singh Judge, now 36, was diagnosed with familial hypercholesterolaemia in June 2022. The genetic condition causes high levels of cholesterol in the blood.

Prior to the diagnosis Simarjot had been experiencing what he thought was indigestion, but it turned out to be angina, a type of chest pain, caused by his clogged arteries.

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Simarjot said he was a “ticking time bomb” as one of his arteries was entirely clogged and another 75% blocked. He needed to undergo quintuple heart bypass surgery to save his life.

Doctors told Judge that he was the “second youngest patient the surgeon has done a quintuple on” and the procedure involves harvesting vessels from elsewhere in the body to reroute blood flow around five blockages in arteries which supply the heart.

Despite experiencing several complications post-surgery, including sepsis which killed his father in 2021, he has since rebuilt his life with “resilience and strength” and found love meeting his partner Savita Klear.

He told PA Real Life: “I had a quintuple bypass, something that is extremely rare.

“I’ve been knocked down a fair few times in life and I only know how to get back up.

“I’ve rebuilt my life, literally piece by piece… and out of all of this, something that I never thought would happen, because I was on the brink of death, is that I was able to meet the love of my life.”

He added: “Life is at some point going to be designed to drag you down and you actually choose how you react to it.

“You can’t just lie there and wait for destiny to