Trust your gut

So yesterday I died again, for the 9th time. Luckily, I was already at a hospital, unluckily, I didn’t have my ICD to protect me — it had been switched off. So a bit of back story; having had 8 cardiac arrests previously, my consultant Cardiologist had referred me to see the Transplant team at a hospital NW of London.

One Year On

It’s now been Seven years since my out-of-hospital, pre-ICD, sudden cardiac arrest — and I have had 7 further arrests and ICD shocks — but I found this old blog post I wrote one year after the event, that for me is an interesting look back at how I felt during those initial months. Perhaps it might help someone here

I’m not a Zombie anymore…

I used to like to think of myself as a real-life Zombie. I mean, I am un-dead, even MORE than just un-dead (I think it’s more accurate to say I am un-un-un-un-un-un-un-undead now). I am THE Walking Dead, the real-life Dead..Poole. One of my favourite zombie movies is Zombieland, where they outline the rules when dealing with zombies. Obviously, God

The Nightmares

Let’s get real for a second, this shit is scary. I don’t like to show it, half part my upbringing in a macho-Australian culture, and half part the fantasy of trying to be a stoic, heroic videogame character. But I can’t pretend that this doesn’t affect me, and there is no better place this manifests than when I’m at my

How a Suit saved my life

When I collapsed for my initial out-of-hospital cardiac arrest when I was 20, it was at a train station in an Australian town called Caboolture. It was the closest train station to my home town on the Sunshine Coast, but had a reputation for being a rough neighbourhood, a town primarily occupied by people on welfare and social support, or

To the girl on the train

At my local train station where I caught the train to my Internship, there was a gorgeous girl who took the same train. Every day, I would try and get the courage to say hello, but couldn’t. One day, we were even seated opposite each other, and yet I still didn’t say a thing. For 3 weeks this carried on,

Red Bull Gives You…

Before my initial out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrest, before I knew what Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy was or that I had it, and before I had an ICD — I was working at my first internship in the city. Every morning, I would hop on the 7:15am train to get to the office by 8:30am. At the final station, there was a convenience

The 8 Times I “Died”

These are the stories of the 8 times I died (well episodes of VT/VF 🙂 ) 1 :: Train Station :: 20 years old I don’t remember much about the initial cardiac arrest that started it all, only 3rd party stories from my family and friends who had to experience it for me, and some of the bystanders who were