In 2002 I carried some groceries up the stairs in our two storey house and thought when I reached the top, it was a bit of an effort. A few days later I walked up the ramp between two floors in our local shopping mall and the same thought occurred. Then I walked quickly to deliver a message to a friend some 50 metres away and I was quite puffed.

Oh well I had better go to the Doctor, he sent me to a cardiologist who put me on a treadmill, all wired up with perhaps 8 or 10 wires stuck on my shaven chest. Two minutes later I am off and he told me that I was to have an angiogram. At this stage I had private medical insurance and I went to a private hospital where my groin was shaved and a tube was inserted into the heart, dye was injected and the Cardiologist informed me that I had had 3 heart attacks. This I found hard to believe and asked him to turn the monitor around so that I could see how he knew. He did and pointed out three places where the dye stopped..

Then he said I was to have a bypass operation. I asked him what that would cost over and above my medical insurance. When he said $10,000 I said that I could not afford it. It will have to be done in a Public Hospital he said and you could wait 2 months. (But being of a mean nature I had thoughts of spending all that money, coming out of the hospital and being run over by a bus, total waste of me earned cash). 3 days later I was told to go and see the surgeon in the Public Hospital.

I fronted up on the Friday and he told me what he was going to do. He asked me if I smoked and was I going to stop. I queried the reason as I had been smoking for 50 years and why did that affect me only lately. He said that it had been building up all that time and if I stopped he would see me in 20 years, and if I kept going he would re-operate in 3 years. I bought one packet of cigarettes went to my club smoked three and gave the packet away. I have not smoked since.

On the Sunday evening into hospital, where my leg and chest was shaved, showered and I slept.

They must have put knockout drops in my late cup of tea as I do not remember going into theatre the next morning.

On Monday about 12.30 the surgeon rang my wife to tell me that he has performed a quintuple bypass. My wife arrived and watched as my temperature was slowly brought back to 36C when I was given a wash. I emerged into this world on the Tuesday, with wires hanging out of my chest, a line in my neck, a drip in the arm, a catheter into my bladder and an oxygen tube in my nose, Talk about wired for sound! Of course I was out of bed in the afternoon, (hospital sign of life) not far but dragging all this stuff around. All the add-ons were removed piece by piece over the next couple of days.

My main concern was coping with the stairs at home and when I mentioned this to the surgeon he told the Occupational Therapy nurse who got me walking up the stairs between floors, and I did this a few times each day. It was a great relief to know that I could, I had had visions of getting halfway up the stairs at home and leaping off this mortal coil.

The surgeon was a very caring person, popping in to see me each day, he brought his teams one day (There were three lots, one taking the artery from my arm, another taking the vein from my leg and the third doing the grafts in to my heart.). He told them that I was a very cooperative patient and I replied that I was cooperative because he told me what was going on. I asked them which had taken the saphenous vein out of my leg, and when I found which, I pointed to it and asked him why he did not get it straight. He told me that it was a work of art, and would I like it signed.

On the Friday I was told I could go home on Saturday or Sunday, I opted for Saturday, the nursing was marvellous but the food.................

After problems, minor, where the artery was taken it was not healing very well. I ended up going back to the ward and the surgeon found that one internal stitch had not dissolved, it was removed.

To my mind it was a fairly routine operation, there are far more complicated procedures, such as all the repair skin grafts done to pilots.

Now seven years later I have no after effects, I take 4 pills each day, watch my diet (or rather my wife does), have 3 monthly blood tests for cholesterol.

I enjoy life, enjoy my friends, look at other people who are far worse off than myself and am grateful.