Media & Television Interviews

I talk about 'mind games', emotional stress, depression, anxiety, feeling surreal and these sort of issues when I give a talk at our cardiac rehab unit. I can talk about these because I was confronted with them, had to accept and deal with them and then move on. In another post I will talk more about this but what I wanted to point out at this point is that these feelings and challenges are not uncommon for people who have had a heart attack, or indeed have had to deal with another life threatening situation.

For close to a year after my heart attack I had issues, just ask my wife, she'll tell you! From being self-confident, independent, financially self sufficient and pretty social, I lost a lot of my self confidence after my heart attack and not being able to work brought on financial issues. Having other health issues apart from a heart condition didn't help and having to cope with people who would say 'you are okay now, move on' was pretty difficult to deal with.

Then, out of the blue in early June 2008, I was approached by our local newspaper, The Gold Coast Bulletin, to do an interview and what was supposed to be a two paragraph article grew legs and became a front page cover story and the article was the lead story for that day's edition. Here are some pics from that time:

Poster outside newsagents promoting the day's edition

Front page 

Article appeared on page 4

The interview took place on June 04, two days before my birthday on the ninth floor of the hospital in the cardiac unit where I spent some time after my heart attack and it was published the next day. All sorts of pretty pics were taken with my wife, Evelyn, and Dr Rahman who saved my life that night and whom I still see today.

Dr Rahman and Evelyn

Evelyn

Me clowning around

Click on the following to read the article: Gold Coast Bulletin Article

The morning of June 05 when the article was published was crazy, crazy, crazy. At 5.15am we had a phone call from Channel Seven in Brisbane saying they had seen the article (we hadn't as yet) and wanted to do an interview for that night's edition of Today Tonight, they said they would be down at our place by 7.00am and sure enough they arrived at the said time and we went to a local park to do the interview, it was too noisy at our place with all the birds LOL - a link to the interview is below.

Soon after Seven phoned two local radio stations called as did one from Brisbane to do brief interviews over the phone. Then Channel Nine phoned but because we had committed to Channel Seven they lost interest....LOL. However, Channel Nine did do an interview with me later in the year which was excellent and a link to that is below.

As I said, the day was crazy but one thing it did for me was reignite a belief in myself to tell my story and to promote and advocate for something that until the time of my heart attack I was not aware of:

THAT DIABETICS MAY NOT NECESSARILY HAVE THE CLASSIC WARNING SIGNS WHEN HAVING A HEART ATTACK!!! 

This is what happened to me and if it wasn't for Evelyn calling the paramedics when she did, I would not be here today typing this blog, and that's a fact!!!

It would be fair to say that the newspaper, radio and television interviews and one I did later in the year for arguably Australia's largest selling magazine New Idea, helped me pick myself up decide to do something with what had happened to me and spread the message about diabetics and heart attacks and I guess that is the essence of this post - I stumbled around for close to a year going through the motions of life but not really caring all that much and being a bit of a 'shit' to my wife and possibly others but then we this sort of reawakening, a new direction for me to take appeared and I have been running with that ever since as I will talk about at a later time. Suffice to say, it got me motivated to promote wherever and whenever this message and here are a couple of bumper stickers I created to help me do this.

This is the Channel Seven Today Tonight interview:

The next morning I was at Channel Seven local studio doing a short interview for their Morning Show, was nice being on national TV for my 55th birthday :-).

In October 2008, Channel Seven did a second interview with me for Today Tonight that dealt with the question of NDE - Near Death Experience. I felt this was a bit more of a sensationalist interview but really did not know what I was getting myself into when I was approached, actually had thought I would be able to use the opportunity to share my experience of having a heart attack without any real warning signs.

The interview I did in November 2008 with Margueritte Rossi for Channel Nine's Extra programme went very well and I was able to get the message out about diabetes during the interview. Having Dr Rahman involved with the interview was very important and he also underscored the message about diabetics sometimes not having any of the classic signs when having a heart attack. Here is the channel Nine interview that went to air under the title "29 Lives":

Channel Nine interview - "29 Lives''

Just as finding it rewarding to help Evelyn with her wildlife rescue birds and becoming comfortable and enjoying doing this myself and then rediscovering photography helped me deal with my recovery process after my heart attack I need to stress it was being asked to give interviews about what I had been through that really helped me get my head together. Finding out and understanding the significance of not having any real symptoms when I had my heart attack became the motivation I needed to get me 'out there' to spread this information and no doubt spurred me on into taking and creating opportunities to talk about this. I will talk more about this in a separate post.