The moment

As usual I got up at 3.30am in the morning – after 17 years, you just can’t stop, even on the weekends.

I went downstairs and thought, “Should I go for a walk?” After all, I was trying to lose some weight and I was in a fitness regime.

I looked out the window and decided it was too dark and scary – I might get mugged. I might just wait a little bit.

I sat down to watch some early morning television – you know, the shows where you can buy an ab rocker or get some incredible skin care products that reduce ageing – and all of a sudden it started.

Now I’m not talking about Marlin Brando clutching at his chest and staggering sideways through his rows of tomato plants.

In fact, the way mine was, I defy anyone to diagnose themselves as having a heart attack. It was an ever-so-distant dull-not-even-ache somewhere at the top of my stomach.

Honestly, my first thought was that I shouldn’t have had that chicken wrap last night.

Off to the doctor.

Now where a heart attack is concerned you are supposed to call 000 immediately and get thee to the nearest hospital asap, but for us morons who shuffle around the house going “It was the chicken”, it takes us a lot longer to realise what is going on, and with your heart in distress the longer you leave it the worse it is for you.

I got some soda water and tried to relieve my “indigestion”. I had a lie down, hoping that the dull ache would go away.

My brother rang just to make sure I was going to turn up at his son’s wedding that day (I have a history of “no shows”).

My wife Kym came into the room and asked: “Will you drive to Caloundra and pick up Stella’s costume?”

I opened one eye and wheezed from the pillow: “I don’t think I can.”

She took control of the conversation: “It’s Caloundra or the Doctor – your choice.”

I mumbled a reply: “It will have to be the doctor.”

The hospital

I went down to Coolum to the 7 Day Doctors and naturally there was a two-and-a-half-hour wait, so in desperation I tried the other one at the top of Birtwill Street.

The lady was lovely. “What luck,” she said, “in three minutes that door will open and there will be a doctor.”

He was a young Irish bloke, who listened to my story and my heart and said: “I’m going to give you two aspirin and an ambulance.”

Once in the back of the ambulance I was surprised to find they actually used a spray under my tongue to relieve the pain, which wasn’t a pain anyway. I was still convinced it was the chicken wrap!

Five more minutes down Coolum/Yandina Road and they repeated the process. This happened once again before I arrived at Nambour Emergency, where, incidentally, they were absolutely wonderful considering I had the heartbeat of a used Chux.

They stabilised me, monitored me for an entire day, eventually shipping me off to a cardiac doctor at Sunshine Coast Private Hospital.

I lay in intensive care there for a day while they stabilised me and monitored me – and when the chicken wrap wouldn’t go away, they administered morphine, which is something I never want to repeat ever again in my life.

After I had spent an hour and a half talking to Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, they arranged for me to travel to Brisbane for what they call a “rescue angioplasty”. Before I knew it I was in another ambulance headed south.

The operation

There were two patients in the back of the ambulance this time – I shared it with a lovely elderly lady named Joy who was not only twice my age but, as it turned out, twice as fit as me.

After the usual traffic delays getting past the Bribie turn-off, even for an ambulance, I eventually arrived at the back door of the Holy Spirit Hospital in Brisbane where I said goodbye to Joy.

I was wheeled straight to the operating theatre and was on the slab within minutes. I can’t remember which nurse it was that had obviously drawn the short straw to be the one to shave my groin, but I was prepped within seconds.

The surgeon, whose name was Con (Couple a days - Couple a days), came out looking very much like a beekeeper but with perspex where the gauze should be.

Amazingly enough, I was awake through the whole thing.

There were three television monitors in front of him, he stuck what I thought was fencing wire up through my groin, jiggled it around in my heart a little bit, unblocking it and repairing it within 45 minutes.

A week of recovery and I’m home now, and feeling better than I have for a long time. But there is small voice inside me still telling me, next time – don’t eat the chicken wrap.