I'm lucky to be alive, says veteran broadcaster

Brendan Telfer says he has probably returned to his job 'earlier than the neuro team would have liked'. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Veteran sports broadcaster Brendan Telfer, who collapsed at Wellington Airport from a subarachnoid haemorrhage this year, considers himself one of the lucky ones.

The 58-year-old revealed there was "some slight family history" behind the health scare that led to his being put into an induced coma at Wellington Hospital in March.

"My mother had a brain aneurism and she died at the same age as me in Wellington Hospital," said Telfer.

"But I guess I am lucky. I heard that 50 per cent of people who suffer these things normally die."

Telfer went back to his Radio Sport job this week after nearly four months away. His on-air duties require him for just an hour a day from 10am as he eases back into his role.

But he expects to be fully recuperated and back to his normal three-hour slot by October at the latest.

He still suffers headaches and fatigue requiring him to rest but believes both will subside within the next few weeks.

"I probably have gone back to work earlier than the neuro team would have liked ... the key is to be very careful and to have a lot of rest."

Telfer runs and swims most days but feels "like a very unfit overweight person starting out on a fitness regime". The keen golfer, who plays off a handy 10 handicap, says that nowadays he struggles to hit a nine iron 80 metres.

At the time of his health scare, Telfer was in Wellington and looking forward to launching his new book, A Life in Sport, a couple of days later in Auckland.

He had just checked himself in for his flight home to Auckland when his vision started to go blurry, he became breathless and had a "bit of an achy feeling" in his body. "I reckoned if I could just get on the plane I would feel better, for whatever reason I had no symptoms prior to that," he said.

"I walked about 10 metres and had no power in my body. I literally could not put one leg in front of the other so I just gently let myself down and called out for help as I lay on my back."

It took two medical opinions before Telfer was shunted into an ambulance and rushed to Wellington Hospital.

He has no recollection of what happened once he was in the ambulance but was later diagnosed as having suffered a subarachnoid haemorrhage, or in layman's terms a bleeding on the brain.

Surgeons drilled a couple of holes into the side of his head to relieve the pressure and repeated the process on the other side a couple of days later.

Asked if the experience had changed his life, Telfer said it hadn't.

"I do what I have done, I still exercise and take it easy but when I think back on it I realise I was very fortunate."