By Luke Voogt
Lara MP John Eren returned to work last Friday after a cardiac arrest two months ago which left him clinically dead for three minutes.
Mr Eren was “feeling healthier than ever” thanks to the stent which doctors implanted in his artery shortly after they resuscitated him.
“I never knew I was operating on one less artery,” he said.
“Here I was thinking I needed a coffee to pep me up when actually one of my arteries was blocked.”
Mr Eren considered himself extremely lucky to be alive.
Of 30,000 people who suffer cardiac arrests in Australia each year, only 9 per cent survive, according to Take Heart Australia.
The incident made Mr Eren value everything more, from his family to the sound of “birds in the morning”, he said.
“There’s nothing like dying for three minutes to bring you back to earth.”
With Mr Eren’s mother and uncles suffering heart problems in their fifties, he was always at risk.
“When people look at me, they see a fit young man and wonder how it happened to me,” the 52-year-old said.
“But if you’ve got family history, you can’t dodge it.”
Mr Eren suffered the arrest on Father’s Day 4 September when he and his wife were driving to see his dad in Melbourne.
“It’s like something heavy sitting in your chest and something wanting to break out,” he said.
“You realise there’s a struggle of life and death going on inside you – and you’re a bystander.”
His wife turned the car around and drove to Geelong Hospital.
“I got to the hospital and within four or five minutes, I collapsed on floor of the emergency ward,” he said.
He remembers waking up in ICU and was later amazed to watch a video feed on screen as doctors inserted a stent.
“I followed it through all the way from my groin to heart,” he said.
“Twenty years ago that would not be possible.”
With 80 per cent of cardiac arrests taking place outside hospital, Mr Eren urged people not to take chances with severe chest pain.
“Luckily for me, it actually happened on the premises at Geelong Hospital,” he said.
“Just go straight into hospital and get checked up,” Mr Eren advised.
