A popular Welsh rugby club boss has miraculously defied the odds to survive two heart attacks and a stroke.

Pontypool RFC team manager Ryan Thomas, 38, was admitted to hospital with chest pains following a workout on November 7, but went into cardiac arrest while waiting to be seen. His heart stopped for an hour as medical staff tried desperately to revive him, giving him over 20 shocks with a defibrillator before finding a heartbeat.

The nightmare was far from over, however, as after being admitted to intensive care, Mr Thomas had another heart attack, with a scan revealing that he had also suffered a "substantial" stroke. That stroke made necessary further treatment extremely risky, with his family - including his wife Victoria - told by a consultant that he "wouldn't bet on" him pulling through.

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But, against all odds, he survived and has since overcome numerous infections to wake up after five "horrendous" weeks under sedation. After battling through hell and back, he now faces a long road to recovery, with his family appealing for help to fund a suitable rehabilition programme and adaptions to their home in New Inn.

Two months ago, however, it looked unlikely that Mr Thomas - a father to three-year-old Teddie - would even survive his initial heart attack, having fallen ill after a workout session with the Pontypool squad.

Recalling the events of that evening, Victoria told WalesOnline: "Ryan came home from work and was actually fine, he wasn't unwell or anything. He went off to a CrossFit session with Pontypool as they hadn't trained for two weeks, so they just wanted to keep active.

"When he came back, he was huffing and puffing down the stairs. He came upstairs and laid down on the bed and said 'I don't feel very well', and I admitted that he did look poorly, he looked grey. He said he had some chest pains, so I took him to hospital."

After arriving at A&E at the Grange Hospital in Cwmbran, Mr Thomas waited to be seen - only for disaster to strike half an hour later.

"I went to go and get him a drink," Victoria explained. "But when I came back he was unresponsive and making this really strange sound in the chair. I screamed for help and they must have pressed the emergency buzzer as they all rushed out.

"He went into cardiac arrest at that point and they took him in. His heart stopped for an hour and they were working on him that whole time, I think they shocked him 21 times."

As time ticked on with no success, Victoria was faced with a heartbreaking decision, with family coming in to see her husband for what they thought could well be the last time. However, fate had other ideas.

"The registrar came in and said that we need to start thinking about what's best for Ryan, because they couldn't get his heart to restart," she said. "But as she said that, another doctor came in and said they had a heartbeat."

"We had thought we were going to lose him, because it didn't look good. I was frantic because I just thought, what am I going to tell Teddie? That's all that was running through my mind."

Mr Thomas was then transferred to intensive care in a critical but stable condition and had a stent fitted the following day. However, just as things had stabilised, he suffered a second heart attack, with a CT scan revealing further damage that, in turn, left the family with another life-threatening dilemma.

"The scan results came back and they said it looked like, at some point during the cardiac arrest, Ryan had suffered a stroke," said Victoria. "It was quite a substantial stroke on the right hand side and they didn't really know, at that point, whether he would wake up or, if he did, what his quality of life would be.

"Obviously, they needed to treat him and give him a blood thinner called heparin. But that came with a huge risk, because it could cause a massive bleed on the brain. We spoke to the consultant and the words he said were 'If I were a betting man, I wouldn't bet on him'.

"He didn't think he was going to pull through, so I called everybody in to say I think they should stay overnight, which we all did."

Remarkably, despite the consultant's grave fears, brave Mr Thomas not only survived the treatment but got through it "absolutely fine," according to his wife. However, having already gone through so much, the following five weeks he spent under sedation brought nothing but anxiety, fear and loneliness for Victoria, who felt helpless as she watched her husband battle against infections and seizures when they attempted to bring him around.

"It's been an absolute rollercoaster," she said. "He was getting infection after infection and they would make him really poorly and it would set him back a bit. You'd always expect the worse and think he was going to die, and I did get to the point where I really thought I was going to lose him.

"We lost our nan two years ago and my sister was very close to her, and I remember her saying to me 'I'm lonely'. At the time I couldn't understand, because she had my mum and me and everybody around her, but now I know exactly what she meant. I would go to Ryan for everything, and even though I had my sister and my mum there, I would feel lonely because I couldn't speak to him. He would always reassure me in dire situations.

"The wait would just fill me with dread, continually. I would dread seeing the consultants because I didn't want them to give me any more bad news and it would fill me with panic if they wanted to speak to me. I would just worry what they were going to tell me next."

After undergoing a tracheostomy, Mr Thomas was able to be brought round without any seizures and is now awake, communicating and out of intensive care. While he has weakness on his left side, he has already made progress and was able to spend time with his beloved little boy over the Christmas period.

"He was awake for Christmas, so me and my little boy came in and we made it special," said Victoria. "We brought in balloons and laid out reindeer food and left Santa a mince pie. We wanted to include Ryan and make it as special for Teddie and his dad as possible. Ryan misses him terribly, because they are like two peas in a pod. They do everything together."

"Ryan has got left-sided weakness. He can move his left leg now, that has come back in the past couple of days, thankfully. He has got sensation on the left side, but he can't move his arm yet. He remembers Fireworks Night, but anything from that day on the 7th, he doesn't remember."

While Mr Thomas has defied the odds, however, his recovery journey is only just beginning. How much his life has changed will only really become clear once he begins a programme of rehabilitation, with his family determined to get him the best care possible. A GoFundMe page, set up by Victoria's sister, has already raised more than £22,000 but more donations are needed to hit its target.

"We're waiting for him to be transferred to Ystrad to start his rehab, but hopefully, with the GoFundMe, we can fund private rehabilitation because everything's a little bit slow with the NHS and Ryan doesn't really get the physio that he needs on the current ward he's on," said Victoria. "It's very sporadic which is no good to Ryan really.

"Until I speak to the occupational therapist, I'm not one hundred percent sure exactly what he'll need," she added. But I think, eventually, when he is going to be able to come home, we're going to need a wet room and ramps into the house. Whether we'll also need to have a a bedroom downstairs or a stairlift or things like that, it's difficult to say at this point, but they are the things we're thinking of."