Eric Hutchinson (Lyons, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to rise to speak on this motion. I commend the member for Werriwa, and also the member for Reid for seconding the motion. I come to speak on this motion from personal experience. I was 42 years old when I had a myocardial infarction. For those who are not aware, effectively it was plaque blocking one of the arteries in my heart. That was eight years ago. In some respects it was probably the best thing that had ever happened to me. It was a wake up call. I could tick off so many of the risk factors. I have smoked for much of my life. I had a family history. I was doing too much of this and not enough of that. But it was eight years ago and now I feel as good as I have ever felt.

I would like to go through my experience, because it was quite a personal experience. I woke up on a Saturday morning. It was a medal stroke day at my golf club, where I used to play golf. They always say, beware the injured golfer! As it happens—the back tees and everything else—off a handicap of 10; I had net 72. I did not win the medal stroke that day, but I played there. All day I felt nauseous. I felt nauseous. Later that evening I went to my sister's place for dinner at Exeter down on the West Tamar. It was a family gathering. I had to excuse myself from the dinner table because what had been a nauseous ache all day became quite an acute pain across the top of my stomach. I went outside. I stood next to the compost bin for about 20 minutes thinking I was going to be ill.

I came back inside and my wife, who is a pharmacist, and my sister, who is a nurse at the emergency department of the Royal Hobart Hospital, who happened to be there that night, said I looked grey. They both said, 'I think you're having a heart attack.' I sat down. Whilst the ambulance was coming—and all credit to the ambulance for coming very quickly—I got the classic tingle in my left arm and so forth. The ambulance driver, to his credit, arrived, but he thought that I had some form of diarrhoea. It was only on my sister and my wife's insistence that I walked to the ambulance and he took my blood pressure, which then was 220 over 140, and that is when he realised that there might be something going on.

I was taken in to the Launceston General Hospital very efficiently. It was a Saturday. Whilst I was misdiagnosed on arrival, I was stabilised and I was put in intensive care. I was quite lucid and so forth. On Monday morning, Dr Brian Herman, cardiologist, put in two stents, which is a very simple operation. You remain awake. They come up through the artery in your groin. I had two stents placed in the central artery in my heart. It was quite interesting because the two other arteries were quite clean—they were about 15 per cent blocked, which is about normal for somebody my age—but my central artery was completely blocked.

I want to thank all the staff at the Launceston General Hospital. I want to thank my cardiologist, Brian Herman. He does outstanding work. I want to thank my general practitioner, Frank Brunacci, who lives in my electorate at Longford. I want to thank also Dr Sindhu, who I have seen in more recent times.

I also want to reflect that I was out of hospital on the Thursday. That was a Saturday, and I had had my stents put in on the Monday. I was out of hospital on the Thursday. I went back to work on the following Monday, and it was the worst thing I could have done. I took myself home on Monday night and I did not go back for a month, and that was probably the best thing I ever did. I felt fine, but it was quite a shock to my system. It was probably three months later that I started to feel like myself again.

I just say that this is really important. Defibrillator Awareness Month and the Cardiac Arrest Survival Foundation: more power to them. Twenty-three thousand to 33,000 people die each year from sudden cardiac arrest. Beware that the symptoms are not always classic. Beware that the symptoms for women are often quite different to those of men. In my case, I felt nothing other than a little unwell. It manifested itself into something that I, in hindsight now, am very grateful happened to me, because we do a little bit more of that and a little bit less of this. I commend the member for Werriwa for this motion today.

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