Why am I the walking dead

My doctor calls me the walking dead. I am the luckiest person in the world because smoking killed me. I felt I needed to tell my story in hope to inspire others. I was a moderate smoker, a pack a day was about average, after about 25 years I quit on and off but was probably really only kidding myself & then came that fateful day. I stupidly thought I had a gall stone. I thought seriously about taking a Panasonic and having a lie down. It was shortly after lunch and I was planning a long drive to an evening function. Thinking I had a couple of hours to resolve this pain I decided to drive myself to hospital, I live only a few minutes away. The first traffic light was red but soon changed and the next two I got straight through. Into the hospital car park I spotted the one and only spot reasonably close to Ed otherwise it was a long walk from the back paddock. There was one chap sitting in the ED that day and the lady at the counter said what’s wrong with you seeing me holding my upper abdomen in pain. I responded with my gall stone prognosis and a nurse behind her said come straight in we’ll give you an ECG and make sure there is nothing going on with your heart and then we can have a look at your gastric problem

I followed her to the resus room and removed my jumper at which point the pain went down my arm and up into my jaw. As I lay down I saw the nurse unravel cables and that is when I left this world and started toward another.

Cardiac arrest is sudden. The heart stops, intake of oxygen stops, the brain and body begin the process of dying. Plaque in the artery supplying oxygen to my heart muscle had ruptured nd a massive blood clot was forming around the wound blocking the flow of oxygenated blood to my heart. It was cramping, hence the pain. Eventually the clot got so big the heart could go no more, they call it the Widow Maker. I’d played golf that morning on a rare day off and happily walked the course with no trouble, the warning was brief and only by way of a miracle heeded enough to get me to a place where I would have a chance to survive.

I returned to me existence sitting bolt upright from a serious jolt from a defibrillator preceded by CPR. I am surrounded by a horde of people swarming over me, cutting away my clothes, connected tubes and cables and I have a candler inserted. A doctor informed me of what happened and I swallow a few tablets and am told to lie down and take it easy while they sort a transfer to a larger hospital with a catheter lab. I took it easy alright. Only this time I felt myself go. My eyes rolled into the back of my head and a blackness enveloped me as I thought S*** I’m gone and that was it.

Once again I’m sitting bolt upright. Next to me is a Nurse, looking like she’d just run a marathon but really had just been pounding up and down on my chest. I thank her for the broken ribs and the soft tissue damage that I still feel today. The doctor that applauded the whole team for their great work in getting me back, but also taking the precaution of asking me if there was anything he’d like him to tell my wife. He negotiated strongly to get me attended to straight upon my arrival and travelled in that screaming bumping ambulance until he made sure that arrived. To the surgeon and nurses that skilfully inserted a stent into my blocked artery I owe each and all every breath that I draw from then and this day forward.

To the words of the surgeon that smoking was what caused my heart to stop.

Not a microgram of smoke has been ingested by my own will since that day. Yes I still like the rest of the non smoking public have to occasionally encounter someone else’s smoke and as I manoeuvre to avoid them I remind myself of my own incredible good fortune that I can and hope that the smoker never needs the luck that I had to beat the incredible odds of dodging the Widow Maker