I was working as a for'ard sheet hand on a yacht, Helios, owned and raced by an accountant, Chris Higham. The day was a scorcher, at 45 deg C in the shade, and not a breath of wind for the start of a pennant race sailed out of the South of Perth Yacht Club.

Shortly after the starting gun, the wind picked up, and so did a dull, heavy pain in my chest. It was similar to one I had experienced the previous weekend. I had dismissed it then as indigestion, but no matter how many times I burped, it wouldn't go away.

Now, on the yacht, the pain was stronger, and I could feel my strength slipping away. My left arm ached. We had raced two legs — the first upwind, the second downwind under spinnaker — and we were beating again to windward. I felt way out of it, and not really that aware of what was going on around me. All I could do was concentrate on willing the pain in my chest to go away. It didn't.

"You'll have to do all the work on the winches," I told my counterpart on the port side, Rory Crystal, a Canadian with a wicked sense of humour. "I just don't have the strength anymore." I looked back at the wake of the boat and watched dark iridescent green squares float away into the distance..

"Are you able to keep going?" Chris asked from the helm, adding in all seriousness, "we aren't in a position to win any more, so it doesn't matter if we go back now."

Well, that was fine as far as I was concerned. I crept below and crawled on to a bunk as the crew put the boat about, and started back to the yacht club. For'ard hand Dave Fernandez came below and bathed my neck in ice and cold water, suspecting that I was suffering from heat stroke. He suggested that I lie down, but I knew that if I did, I would not get up again.

All the while, I sat with my arms cross over my chest in a vain effort to ease the increasing pressure on my chest — not a sharp, stabbing pain, but a continuous, dull ache which made breathing seem difficult. I must have nodded my head and mumbled "yes" when someone asked if he should call an ambulance on Chris' mobile phone.

The boat finally docked, and I was up and out of the cabin, and seemingly racing along the 80 metres of finger pier to the shore.
 

This little device was my nexus to life. It is a canula. The long white tube is inserted
upwards into an arm vein. It's one of
my all-time great life souvenirs.

Twenty minutes later, I was in the casualty ward of the Royal Perth Hospital undergoing all sorts of tests. An ECG showed that I was having a heart attack. The duty staff carefully explained the treatment to follow... and the likely outcomes:

(a) If it worked; and

(b) if it didn't.

They explained that in the second case, there were several additional courses of action. And they explained the ultimate (deadly) outcome. I had to sign a document giving the hospital authority to whip me into the operating theatre for open heart surgery... should the treatments failed to work. I was beyond any questions about any document put in front of me.

I was loaded up with TPM, which was intended to selectively dissolve the clot causing the blockage in the artery. If that didn't work, the next option was a stronger drug, Streptykenase, that was affectionately known as "drain cleaner". Then if that failed, immediate heart surgery was on the menu.

Needles were inserted into both forearms, although the right one remained virtually unused during the treatment. The TPM was pumped through the left one canula for an hour. A blood pressure machine automatically did its work every minute or so. At the end, the pressure it applied left my upper left arm a mass of black bruises for the following week. A sister constantly supervised me during the treatment.

The discomfort in my chest intensified and I remember writhing on the bed trying to make my body put its attentions elsewhere. I was given two doses of morphine to quell the pain. The second dose more or less confirmed for me that something really serious was going on... that I might just be a little closer to dying that I had wished to think, and that I was in hospital for a very good reason.

It was the loneliest time in my life. My family was in Hobart on the other side of the continent. And I told hospital staff not to worry them, anyway. I hadn't lived in Perth for long enough to establish a circle of close friends. I had broken up three months earlier with the woman I had moved to Perth to be with.

I concluded that it was a case of having to fight my way through on my own. Yes, I had to put my trust in the people at the hospital to give me the right treatment to get me well. But emotionally, it was up to me and me alone. It was a lesson that stood me in great stead in terms of independence and future cycling endeavours.

Eventually, the emergency treatment passed, and I was transferred to the cardiac unit for monitoring and a constant inflow of Heprin to ensure no more blood clots formed. I was booked for an angiogram on the Monday afternoon to assess damage to the heart muscle. This would determine just how badly the arteries were clogged with muck, and ultimately how incapacitated I would be.

I felt tired, but otherwise quite good, and I thought I would have no trouble going home and resuming my life immediately. I did get up from the bed at one stage to go to the toilet. I walked the stand with the Heprin solution with me. I finished up and flushed the toilet, turn and found the bathroom floor covered in blood. I had accidentally pulled the line out of the canula in my arm.

The angiogram went smoothly. It involved a tiny incision in the femoral artery in my right groin, and the insertion of a sheath to take catheters up the aorta and into the heart. All this was done under a local anaesthetic just in the groin. The arteries aren't serviced by nerves, so there is no sensation of the catheter being worked upwards through them.

A television screen graphically showed all the action as the catheter wormed its way into the heart's arteries. Doses of dye were injected through the catheter into each artery, but each produced rather different sensations. The first dose led to a warm, tingling sensation in the groin and adjoining bits. The second dose recreated the heavy feeling in the chest. Thankfully, this time, the heavy chest pain lasted but two seconds.

I was beginning to feel quite healthy by now. I told the heart surgeon that I felt like a fraud lying in the angiogram theatre. He looked at me very seriously, and said that after what had happened, I was in the best possible place.

When the angiogram was finished, the surgeon said my prognosis was excellent. I had been lucky, and could count myself in the 1 to 2 per cent of the population who suffered similar heart attacks and walked away from hospital with what he described as a "trivial amount of heart muscle damage".

For my six-week check-up, I visited another surgeon who was on duty when I was admitted to the casualty ward. She looked at my file and said: "Yes, I remember you. You came in with a heart attack and a miracle happened in front of us". Out of all that had happened, that statement had the most impact on me.

The important thing about all this was that I had been given a monumental wake-up call. After what the surgeons said, I knew I was in a privileged position, and my heart was basically undamaged despite the abuse it had endured. In short, the time had arrived to change my lifestyle. I had been a two-packet-a-day smoker until then, and I had been under a degree of stress from a failed relationship, as well as a change in my employment prospects.

The power of the mind is incredible. After 1 February 1997, I did not even have to think about putting cigarettes out of my life. The desire disappeared completely. The post-discharge treatment involved simply taking half an ordinary aspirin tablet each day for the rest of my life. Aspirin has the ability to reduce blood clotting — there is a degree of caution needed because the lack of clotting can be a serious problem with bleeding injuries. Care also is needed to avoid stomach ulcers.

The lesson was clear about the potential for uncontrolled bleeding. I had bruised my shin the week before the heart attack. After I left hospital, the bruise had increased to three times its size. Another bruise on a hand knuckle swelled up and was quite painful.

My cholesterol level was 5.6, and that was considered to be in the normal range. My blood pressure was acceptable, even on the low side for my age (42 at the time). My weight was fine at 87kg. Other than losing the cigarettes and stress, I did not have to modify much of my lifestyle.

I left hospital in much, much better condition than when I arrived, but I still had a way to go before getting everything back to "normal". I had to find my own way home, and that was a bit of a challenge. My ex-girlfriend refused point blank to collect me from the hospital. I nervously waited for a taxi to come to pick me up. But home was a place I was glad to see.

The hospital issued me with an exercise regimen that involved walking for about 30 minutes each day. Easy, I thought. Wrong, I found.

When I delivered my CV for a job application on the Wednesday after my discharge, I parked the car about half a block away from the office, but I was uncertain of its exact location and in fact took the long way around the block to get to it. On the way back to the car, I felt exhausted and had to stop every 20 metres to rest.

For the exercise regimen, I chose a route around home comprising two blocks over reasonably flat ground. My first couple of nights of walking were real battles of mind over body. I felt like a zombie after only a quarter distance. Of course, most of this lack of stamina and strength was attributed to the drugs used to manipulate my heart rate and blood pressure, and to dissolve the clot while I was in hospital. There also was the physical and emotional shock of what had happened.

Things did improve gradually. My strength slowly returned, and I increased the distance I of my nightly walks, from around a kilometre to two, then three.

My CV failed to convince my potential employers, but others did appreciate my talents. I picked up casual work with the local metropolitan newspaper, The West Australian, as a sports sub-editor working afternoon shifts. A State Government department engaged me to write media releases and ministerial speeches. At least my stress levels about employment were reduced, although I would have liked the timing to be a little later to enable my full recovery and restoration of my stamina.

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