I was at the Galway Masters last weekend and I lost count of the number of times I was pressed to tell my story by people who wanted to know all of the details. This old (repaired) heart of mine was deeply touched by the care and concern shown to me by so many members of our basketball family. Late on Sunday night we were reluctantly dragged into another bar for a last drink by some friends, one of whom urged me to tell the story to the wider GB Masters community. So, here it is.
How I checked out, yet still won gold, by Peter Radford
I was in Pesaro, Italy, for the FIMBA European Masters Basketball Championships in the last week of June, playing for Great Britain over 70s. I arrived late on Friday night, only having time for a beer and a shower before bed. On Saturday I enjoyed a leisurely day by the pool, followed by the customary chaotic, but joyous opening ceremony in the evening. With 192 teams, from 29 countries, along with all of the officials, it was quite the procession. After some pizza and one beer I was in bed at ten-thirty, because our first game was at quarter to nine on Sunday morning.
It was an early start, with a bus at seven-fifteen, but I felt great in the warmup, with most of my shots going in, and I was confident that the game was shaping up to be one of those where I couldn’t miss. We had played the Lithuanian team at the other end for the gold medal at the Turin European Masters games in 2019, and I’d had one of those golden-touch games then where almost everything I threw up went in. What’s that about pride and a fall?
Does number 25 in the front row look like a man with only 15 minutes left to live?
I was in the game for only three minutes. Here’s my one and only shot of the tournament (missed).
Just ten seconds left of my first life.
As I moved to the top of the key to receive a pass for my favourite three-point shot, I felt my head spin and just had time to wonder, ‘what’s this about?’
That was the last thought I had in my first life, then I was skipping the light fandango and turning cartwheels across the floor. No, that didn’t happen; apparently, I went down like a felled tree. My face did turn a whiter shade of pale, though, and then several more lurid colours when oxygenated blood stopped reaching the extremities.
The next thing I was aware of was looking up at Jim Durie, number 4, telling me ‘You were gone for three minutes, Peter.’
‘What do you mean, knocked out?’
’No, I mean you were gone, as in gone gone’, he said, making the chopping gesture at his throat.
I had been taking the stairway to heaven, two steps at a time as usual, for three minutes until my friends decided, ‘Come back number 25, your time is not yet up.’ I later discovered that Jim had sugared the pill a little and that it was actually six minutes before the defibrillator finally jump-started me on the fourth attempt.
Most people would call a cardiac arrest or heart attack very bad luck. However, I consider what happened to me to be extremely good fortune, because if it had happened anywhere else, on any of my regular daily activities, it would almost certainly have meant curtains for me. In this case, a retired cardio-thoracic nurse was watching on (Colette Allerston, wife of my teammate John, number 13), a retired Premier League rugby physiotherapist (Jim Durie, number 4) was on court with me at the time, and I was playing in a venue with a defibrillation kit On top of all that, I was in Italy; specifically, a short ambulance ride from the hospital in Pesaro (deemed to be the best in the country for cardiac rehabilitation) and only an hour and a half away from Ancona, considered by many to be the best cardio-thoracic surgery unit in all of Italy.
Collette and Jim, and Bob O’ Hanlon, the photographer, were administering CPR in seconds, which was followed very quickly by the defibrillation procedure, with Flynn Reid, our team manager, doing the shocking. The ambulance arrived quickly, and I was in the hospital in Pesaro in less than half an hour. I learned later that the game had been abandoned at that point, with Lithuania up 20 to 11. They were very keen to play on, but my teammates would have none of it. A number of their group were spotted taking phone videos of me in my distress, too, until my friends ordered them to stop and delete.
Colette came with me in the ambulance, and I was conscious for the ride and the rest of the day, in the first hour of which I had an echocardiogram, a chest x-ray, and an MRI scan of my head (it had hit the ground with quite a crack). On Monday they gave me an angiogram, which I went into thinking, hoping, would show that I needed a stent or two in minor vessels, like some other friends in the GB family. Unfortunately, it showed 80 to 90% blockages in two parts of the coronary artery. I wanted to put my hand up and shout, ‘Wait, get me the manager. You’ve got the wrong person here.’ How can this be happening to me, a very fit international athlete with a VO2 max of 46, and a fitness age of 20 (according to my sports watch)? YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS! My blood pressure and cholesterol are always well within healthy parameters, I’ve eaten a Mediterranean diet for at least forty-five years, and I do everything in moderation (well, except exercise, perhaps). That’ll teach me for thinking I’m Superman.
Federico, the cardiologist, explained that my best option was to have double bypass surgery, and that the second best was coronary angioplasty (stents). The first is favourite, because coronary stents can be prone to further blockages.
It took me no time to choose the best option, and he said that they would arrange for me to be sent to Ancona for the operation. I spent the next three days still feeling incredibly fortunate, but also wondering how I have managed to exercise almost every day of my life – football, basketball, swimming, tennis, hillwalking, and climbing serious mountains on my bike and on foot in Britain and other parts of Europe – and never once felt a pain in the chest, a tingle in the fingers, or any other signs that something was amiss. I have since discovered, in all the downtime I had in hospital, searching the Internet for heart problems in older athletes, that there is a growing body of evidence that too much exercise may be even worse for us than too little. Who knew? Who among us knew that there’s such a thing as ‘Athlete’s Heart’? We can’t win.
The ambulance ride to Ancona was on Tuesday afternoon, where I was admitted by the wonderful ward nurse Loretta, and seen shortly afterwards by the surgeon, Dr. Carlo Zingaro. He told me that he was having difficulty deciding whether to go in between my fifth and sixth rib, which is less invasive, or to open the chest in the conventional way by cutting the sternum. He returned later that evening to say he was going for the sternum on the grounds that because the event was caused by an arrhythmia, there was a risk of another arrhythmia if he went through the ribs. He would operate tomorrow afternoon, Wednesday.
I came around at about six that evening and Christopher Munch, the anaesthetist, told me that everything had gone according to plan and that they had found no other problems with my heart. I spent two days in intensive care, and two more in semi-intensive care, my every need being catered for by different teams of wonderful young people. Then a blood infection, leading to a frightening fever that caused me to shiver uncontrollably, was spotted back on the regular ward, which needed an antibiotic drip three times a day, extending my stay by almost a week.
Meanwhile, my team was flying through the tournament, beating all comers, except the USA. However, they weren’t in contention, along with the other non-European teams, Australia, Columbia, Japan, Jordan, South Korea and Uruguay, who were there as ambassadors for the sport from their countries. We beat Italy in the semi-final to earn a place in the final. The other finalist would be the winner of Ukraine versus, yes, you’ve guessed it, Lithuania. Lithuania won that one, so on Saturday morning we would face again the team that wanted to play on at the time of the incident, some of whom had shown me disrespect. They had been awarded the first game, because of a Fimba ruling that any abandonment, for whatever reason, would result in the score at the time standing as the final score. Our manager, Flynn, had appealed, but to no avail. There would be some extra chilli sauce on this one, with the chance to deliver some poetic justice.
It turned out to be a real nail-biter. I could only follow via WhatsApp messages from teammates on the bench, but we were going into the fourth quarter a few points up, and held on to win 45-42 to become European Champions. I heard from teammates who visited on Sunday and Monday that my name was invoked on several occasions as a spur. I know that I haven’t contributed as much on court this time, but having trained and played with the team for two years, I did feel part of this success.
The two who visited me on the Sunday afternoon the day after the final, Paul Ambrosius and Steve Murray, presented me with my medal in mock grand fashion. I made them laugh at my hospital stories, and they made me laugh frequently at their stories of the week. While laughing is good for the soul, it is very painful when you’ve had your sternum sawn through and your rib cage separated with a retractor.
I was finally returned by ambulance to Pesaro on Thursday evening, eight days after the operation. I received further excellent care, attention and physiotherapy, and even better food, in my week back in a two-person ward there, my every need being catered for once again by yet more wonderful young people.
I started learning Italian on a well-known online learning platform in 2019, in preparation for those European Masters Games in Turin, and I’ve kept it up ever since. I always assumed that I would be using it in bars and restaurants, though, and never for a moment did I think it would come in handy in hospitals. Oddly enough, ‘Enfermiere, puoi svuotare il mio papagallo, per favore?’ (nurse, can you empty my pee bottle, please?), punti (stitches) and fibrillazione atriale (you can work that one out) have never come up on any of my courses.
Looking back in the 15 years since I retired, I have a written record of multiple requests for some form of testing to reassure me that I could continue my very active lifestyle without worrying. I was first or second responder at two heart events in that time, the first one in 2010 during a basketball game where a young, fit opponent – with two children and another on the way – went up for a shot and came down already dead. I was the first to respond, and then the wife of one of his teammates and I administered CPR for fifteen minutes or so until the ambulance arrived, but he never survived. His autopsy later showed undiagnosed cardiomyopathy. I made an appointment with my doctor the following week, asking for reassurance that I could continue in my late fifties going at everything like I did in my twenties. He said then, and all of the other times, ‘If you are symptom-free, I can’t justify referring you for any tests.’ He took my blood pressure and offered a prostate check. I said, ‘I don’t think you can reach my heart that way!’
Exactly the same occurred when my regular cycling partner and I were on our usual forty-mile circuit from Bristol to Clevedon and back in summer 2019, when he had a heart attack. Fortunately, all of the pieces fell in place for him to survive, and we still do that ride to this day. As this was nine years on from the first event above, I booked another appointment with the doctor and got exactly the same result; ‘no symptoms, no tests.’
I’m not complaining, because I understand the spending restrictions on GP surgeries. Short of an angiogram, which is invasive and carries its own risks, I wonder which tests, if any, could have picked up the blocked coronary. The minimum is probably an ECG at rest, another ECG under exercise, and an Echocardiogram. You can’t expect much, or any, change from one thousand pounds going privately for that, though. There’s a good chance my coronary wasn’t even blocked back then. One of the Bristol Heart Institute’s cardiologists told me recently that the blockages may have been caused by the event, that the plaque that broke off ended up lodging at those critical points.
I was also supposed to be playing for the England 70s football team in the Masters World Cup in Cardiff in August, and I was looking forward to telling my friends and my grandchildren in particular that I played basketball for Great Britain and football for England in the same summer. I wonder if that opportunity will come round again now.
Still, there will be more tournaments, more days with my wife, more smelling the coffee, and more simple pleasures with family and friends. I had another birthday, too, just two weeks after returning, the first of my second life. I can’t remember the last time I felt excited for the previous seventy-one, but this one was extra special, back in my own home, with the ones I love around me.
*All photos by Bob O’Hanlon
