Neville Green meets the ambulance officers that saved his life.
Waking in a hospital bed, his heart having completely stopped just hours prior, a fit and healthy man wondered "did this just happen to me?"
Neville Green, 53, found himself in Auckland's Middlemore Hospital, the victim of a cardiac arrest.
He was one of the lucky few - statistically the Otahuhu man's chances of survival were just 16 per cent.
But thanks to his partner, Gary Keung, and three St John paramedics, he has been able to return to full-time work as an HR manager and his regular exercise.
Green was today reunited with the paramedics who helped save his life in the early hours of October 30 last year.
"A bit of pain in my back. Nothing major - I went to bed - everything was okay," he said, explaining the incident to the Herald inside the ambulance shed at the St John national headquarters in Mt Wellington.
"I actually don't recall getting up, but obviously something happened, so I jumped out of bed, and I understand I collapsed in the hallway.
"I don't recall anything after that until I woke up a day later and realised what had happened to me - the full force of it. It seemed really surreal, 'did this just happen to me?'"
Keung said he watched his partner collapse in the doorway just after 4am.
Neville Green caught up with paramedics Amy Larsen, Mal McGuire and Chris Harrison after his heart attack. Photo / Doug Sherring
"It was scary, but stupidly, watching all these American programmes, instead of ringing 111, I rang 911 ... I hung up and dialled again. It was the person on that call that calmed me down.
"It's just all a blur," he said.
However, what Keung did, saved Green's life. Performing crucial CPR helped keep the blood pumping in his partner's body until paramedics Mal McGuire, Chris Harrison, and Amy Larsen arrived.
Larsen said the trio of first responders found Green in a doorway.
"We dragged him away to an area where we could get to his chest and get to his body, and we attached the defibrillator and delivered a shock within the first minute of our arrival - which is the main aim of the game really."
She said good CPR and early defibrillator use is proven to improve the outcomes of cardiac-arrest patients.
"I know that people who have out of hospital cardiac arrests have very poor prognostic outcomes, so to see Neville healthy today, healthy and well with no kind of deficits neurological is pretty special."
Green's father died young from a heart attack, but Green said he had no health issues prior to October's incident.
"People have asked 'well you must've known something was happening', well I didn't, I was fully functioning, exercising.
"It's just the realisation it can happen to anyone of us, at any time, life's precious. I'm grateful for the second chance that I've got."
Green returned to work after Christmas, and can now handle a 40-hour week.
He was thankful his mum, who lives with him and suffers from dementia, did not wake during the incident.
"She would've been really scared and, if I died, who would look after her?"
Larsen said there's a lot of advice about what people should do in a similar emergency, "but sometimes it can kind of get lost in the moment".
"The most important thing you can do is call 111. The call takers are really amazing, they will talk you through what to do and get an ambulance on its way pretty much immediately."
She encouraged people to take a first aid course, know where the nearest defibrillator was, and know how to use it.
Of the about 40 people St John treat per week for cardiac arrest, 12 are successfully resuscitated and transported to hospital, but only six will later survive to be discharged, according to its 2015/16 out-of-hospital cardiac arrest report.
About 1500 people die following a cardiac arrest every year in New Zealand, while the chances of survival drop by 10-15 per cent for every minute without CPR or defibrillation.
St John maintains a 16 per cent survival rate for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients, while the Wellington Free Ambulance service has a 14 per cent survival rate, Ambulance Victoria in Australia has 10 per cent, and the London Ambulance Service has a 9 per cent rate.
St John Heart of Gold annual appeal week
This week also marks the annual St John Heart of Gold appeal to help raise funds for command units and specialist equipment.
Each command unit, with state-of-the-art satellite, radio and cellular technology, costs $180,000.
"The command units give us robust communications platforms that help us provide more effective ambulance responses during a major emergency," St John chief executive Peter Bradley said.
Donations can be made online, or to St John collectors throughout New Zealand, and at any ASB branch.
St John treated or transported 437,978 patients during the past year.
How to help heart attack victims
• In an emergency call 111. • Start CPR as soon as possible (the St John 111 call handler will talk you through this). • Check for defibrillator locations. • St John CPR app.
