THE DAY MY HEART STOPPED
LOCAL LEGEND BACK FROM THE BRINK:
GFL great Glenn Keast opens up on his shock cardiac arrest, how sons Tom and Matt helped save his life seven weeks ago and his road to recovery.
GIFTS were arranged on the lounge room floor in the shape of the number 50.
It was Glenn Keast’s milestone birthday. COVID-19 meant no big bash was planned, but wife Carolyn and daughter Eliza, 16, had organised a private surprise for when he returned from football training — 50 gifts for his 50th.
It was a crisp Saturday morning and St Mary’s players were hoping games would go ahead — a decision on the season was still 10 days away.
Glenn had considered going for a run along the Barwon River but instead decided to raise a sweat at training.
“Had I walked or run along the river, and something happened, it might have been a whole different story in terms of time frames,” he says now.
“For cardiac arrest, seconds and minutes matter. Absolutely it was a sliding doors moment.”
It’s seven weeks today since Glenn had his brush with death. To look at him, you would think nothing had happened. The scar on his chest reveals the story.
The family has discussed that day before but this is the first time they have shared intimate details and feelings.
MEMORIES
GLENN recalls having a lie-in for his 50th. His final memory of the day is breakfast on his birthday. Nothing special, just a bowl of cereal.
“I can’t really remember driving down to the ground. I’ve got no recollection of that,” he said.
“I couldn’t remember where I parked my car. I didn’t know where it happened — where the event happened on the oval.
“We trained for 15 minutes and I joined in because I didn’t run (around the river), so my plan was that that would be my sweat for the day.
“I thought I’d have a run around with the boys and have a kick. I can’t remember kicking a ball, marking a ball or handballing a ball.”
St Mary’s players are about 15 minutes into training when son Matt, 18, catches something out of the corner of his eye. Dad is shaky on his feet.
“I sort of joke that the only thing that was a bit off was that he was missing his kicks — he doesn’t miss a lot of kicks, which hurts me to say,” Matt said.
LIFE AND DEATH
GLENN collapsed near the away bench at Anthony Costa Oval and Matt sprinted from the scoreboard side, working on his father to bring him back to life.
He was quickly joined by older brother Tom, 20.
“I got there, and you could see he wasn’t responding; he was just frozen and making weird noises, and he couldn’t breathe,” Matt said.
Tom’s by their side, encouraging his father to pull through as Glenn’s good mate and premiership co-coach Travis Robertson calls the ambulance.
They go back a long way, Glenn and Travis. They’ve known each other since North Shore’s glory days in the 1990s.
“You can’t stop and just let him die in front of you. It would have been one of the worst ways to say goodbye,” Matt said.
“What was going through my head was, ‘I have the opportunity to keep him alive and have the ability to influence him still being here today. Don’t stop. Keep working on him until the ambulance gets here because if you stop, you’ve basically given up hope. Just keep working’.”
Luck has it that an offduty nurse is on the other side of the ground.
“She made a difference from the initial CPR by getting deeper and allowing his heart to jump back into rhythm before he had the defibrillator,” Matt said.
The ambulance arrives minutes later and the boys are whisked away to the netball courts.
“To be taken away, you start getting these thoughts in your head; ‘ Is that the last time I would see him?’” Matt said.
“That was the hardest bit about it because you just don’t know if he’s dead or alive at that time.”
CELEBRATIONS
CAROLYN and Eliza remain at the family’s Highton home preparing the gifts. Coronavirus restrictions were easing and Glenn had planned for a few mates to come around during the afternoon.
Eliza takes the phone call and Robertson breaks the news.
“I could tell in Eliza’s face,” Carolyn said.
“‘Robbo’ had given her the news that they thought Glenn was having a heart attack.”
Mother and daughter arrive at the intersection of La Trobe Terrace and Noble Street. They’re confronted with the ambulance officers reviving Glenn.
“Even in the car, I was starting my little, ‘C’mon mate, not today. This isn’t what we’re doing. You’re going to be OK’,” Carolyn said.
Ambulance officers respectfully tell her to keep her distance.
“I just started yelling out,” she said.
“I started reminding him that he was going to be OK, and we were here, and this isn’t his time, and we’ve got a lot of things to do as a family to keep looking forward to.”
WORD SPREADS
WORD quickly gets out — football is a tight-knit community. Carolyn estimates she had more than 350 texts and Facebook messages.
Glenn is placed in ICU in an induced coma and has no recollection of the events until the Wednesday.
He likens the next few days to a bender, coming in and out of consciousness. “It was just a weird sensation,” he said.
There has been no reason given why he had the health scare.
The family is told to go home and get some rest at 7pm.
The phone rings 30 minutes later. Glenn has had a second cardiac arrest and received another four minutes of CPR.
“At this stage, they still couldn’t pinpoint why this was happening,” Carolyn said.
“I did say — I was a bit demanding — ‘The one thing about this guy lying in this bed in front of us, he thinks outside the square’. There’s nothing that he often gets confronted with that he says, ‘Well, that’s the only answer, that’s the only way we can do it’.
“Whether it’s work, dealing with anything in the family, or whether it’s football, he thinks outside the square all the time.
“I said, ‘All I’m asking you tonight is to really think outside the square. Just give him the opportunity to be with us and to keep living’.”
RECOVERY
GLENN has vague memories of waking up and seeing Carolyn with a mask on.
Doctors want to clear him of coronavirus.
They are separated by a window and given a whiteboard to communicate with each other. They both write, “I love you”.
She lost count of the number of times she told him the story of what happened.
Glenn would ask the same questions. “Who?” “What happened?” “Why am I here?” “How did that happen?”
“That bender he was on, those drugs did some really crazy things to him,” Carolyn said. “He was making some very funny gestures. The double-cobra was one that he did, and that was the one I got on video and I sent that to Robbo, who circulated that to the wider community, which I didn’t realise was going to happen. It provided us with a bit of a laugh and moment to just smile.”
Glenn knows he was fortunate to receive immediate care.
“The fact that we were at St Mary’s and so close to the hospital was a massive key to the positive outcome from a physical and then a mental perspective,” he said.
“When you do some research and find out how many people have an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and how many survive, the survival rate’s between 10-17 per cent.
“And then the people who survive that have no ongoing issues are pretty minimal as well. I’m pretty lucky.”
He recalls telling his boss at Cotton On he would return to work after a week off.
“For me, I got the easy job, because I got to lay in a hospital bed, whereas these guys went through the trauma of the whole event,” he said.
WHAT WAS GOING THROUGH MY HEAD WAS, ‘I HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO KEEP HIM ALIVE AND HAVE THE ABILITY TO INFLUENCE HIM STILL BEING HERE TODAY. DON’T STOP. KEEP WORKING ON HIM UNTIL THE AMBULANCE GETS HERE BECAUSE IF YOU STOP, YOU’VE BASICALLY GIVEN UP HOPE’. MATT KEAST ON FINDING HIS DAD COLLAPSED AT ST MARY’S TRAINING
ROUTINE
GLENN is taking great strides in his recovery. He’s had time to watch last year’s thrilling premiership win — “it’s good to watch when you know the result” — and other games from the finals series.
“You spend all day watching Netflix,” Matt quipped.
Glenn said Matt likes to remind him he is the reason he is alive.
“Matty jokes a bit that I owe him forever but I probably do,” he said.
“When I first spoke in the hospital, he said, ‘I wouldn’t want to save anyone else’.”
Glenn visited St Mary’s a week after the event and is doing daily gym work and regular walks.
Doctors say there is no reason why he should not return doing what he was doing before May 30, including coaching.
An internal cardio device (ICD) sits under his skin above his heart as an “insurance policy” should he have another turn.
The ICD will send an electric shock to restore a normal heartbeat if it detects any irregularities.
“I actually just feel like I lost five days and, yes, I’ve got this device and I need to take medication and all those sort of things, but in many regards I feel like, ‘What’s the big deal?’” Glenn said.
“These guys (family) obviously had to deal with all that, so you talk about stress and pressure and those sort of things — I didn’t feel any of that because it wasn’t a thing for me, as silly as that sounds.”
FRIENDS AND FAMILY
MANY long-lost school friends from Mount Gambier have reached out and countless others across the community have provided support.
“The care giving from Eliza’s school at Sacred Heart to my school at St Robert’s, to the Cotton On family, and friends and extended friends and family — the support was overwhelming,” Carolyn said.
The family recently caught up with the off-duty nurse.
Glenn paid for the coffees.
“I know the club bought her flowers and we bought her a gift but there’s nothing you can actually do for someone to thank them enough,” Carolyn said.
“How do you say thank you enough to someone of allowing us to have him here?”
Carolyn will turn 50 next year and there is a chance there will be a joint 100th to celebrate.
Glenn has unwrapped his gifts but he jokes he will be nervous on the morning of his 51st.