Neil McKay is lucky to be alive and he knows it.
The 70-year-old was in the middle of the fifth end of a curling match on the evening of Dec. 3 when he experienced cardiac arrest. There isn’t really any good time to ever have your heart inexplicably stop, but if you can get prompt medical attention then that is the best you can hope for.
“If it happened at almost any other time ... I certainly would not be here today,” he said.
The reason he considers himself so lucky is because he suffered his arrest in the immediate company of a firefighter and a registered nurse, both of whom were able to utilize the St. Albert Curling Club’s defibrillator unit to get his heart going again before the ambulance arrived to get him to a hospital.
It hasn't been published yet but he wrote a letter to the Gazette entitled ‘Miracle on Taché St.’ to thank Edmonton firefighter Roy Penner who was in play on the neighbouring sheet and registered nurse Jessica Hoekstra for saving his life. In another miracle of fate, Hoekstra was working her first shift at the club that day.
“I'm alive today because all these miraculous factors lined up, but especially because of Jessica and Roy,” he wrote.
“There are a lot of miraculous things in my mind that came together that day. If they hadn't been there, I wouldn't be here today because even though the ambulance was just across the street at the fire hall, they wouldn't have been able to get there – they weren't able to get there – in time. That was only five minutes and that would have been enough for me to be dead.”
The play was in the fifth end of a late draw and McKay had just finished a shot when he started to feel “woozy.” That was the last thing he remembered until the ambulance attendants were getting him onto the gurney.
He added that medical professionals weren’t able to determine the cause of his cardiac arrest. It is different from a heart attack, he explained, in that the heart simply stops possibly because the electrical signals get mixed up and the heart doesn't know what to do. McKay said he maintains a healthy diet and takes care of himself otherwise, including the regular moderate exercise that curling provides.
He has been able to thank Penner already but has not had the same chance with Hoekstra yet. Both of them are “forever superheroes” in his mind, he said, first for knowing what to do and second for acting quickly.
McKay spent two weeks at the Royal Alexandra Hospital and had implanted a cardioverter defibrillator to help provide protection against future cardiac arrests. He expects to take a few more weeks of healing time before he can be back in top curling form again, hopefully by the end of January.
