A 45-year-old Chinese man reportedly suffered a heart attack after getting extremely upset while helping his son with his math homework.

The man, surnamed Liu, had been helping his Year 3 son with homework since school started last month, but over the past two weeks he had started experiencing a mild pain in his chest whenever he got frustrated with the boy. Things got really bad on Sunday, when Liu became really upset after repeating the same math question to his son three times, who was struggling to find the answer. At one point he started experiencing sharp chest pain and shortness of breath, and eventually passed out. Liu later woke up and thought medical attention at the Shenzhen Third People’s Hospital, where he learned that he had suffered a heart attack.

Photo: Annie Spratt/Unsplash

Right after arriving at the hospital, the 45-year-old man collapsed once again and started convulsing and frothing at the mouth. He was quickly stabilized and scheduled for various tests to determine the cause of his symptoms. It was revealed that a part of Mr Liu’s main coronary artery was clogged, and this blockage was cutting the supply of blood to the heart.

Doctors concluded that being a smoker for many years had also contributed to the patient’s condition, but that the heart attack itself had been by intense stress and anger while helping his son with his son’s homework. They added that Liu was wise to come to the hospital when he did, otherwise his heart problem could have been fatal.

Mr. Liu underwent an emergency operation and is now in stable condition while slowly recovering at the Shenzen hospital.

Interestingly, this is the second such case we’ve covered in little over a year. Last November we wrote about a Chinese mother who also suffered a heart attack while helping her son with a math problem.