'DEAD FOR TWO HOURS... THEN I WOKE UP!'
Heart attack survivor Grahame ‘saw the light’ on the other side
His heart stopped for 120 minutes, and he should still be dead, but in the ultimate display of love, Grahame Conlon came back from the other side when he heard his wife’s voice.
The jazz musician’s heart stopped beating after he had a heart attack and died on the golf course just weeks before Christmas six years ago, but he was miraculously brought back to life.
Sydney’s Prince of Wales Hospital surgeons used a state-of-the-art machine that circulated oxygen through Grahame’s body to save him.
He went home a fortnight later free of brain damage. Less than five per cent of people whose hearts stop for more than 30 minutes survive without brain injury.
Just as incredible is that Grahame, now 71, has vivid memories of seeing “bright light” and knowing he was “going” before his wife Paula’s voice pulled him back from the brink.
‘Every Christmas since is the best gift we can have’
“I remember seeing myself sitting in a wheelchair spiralling down a huge funnel lined with numbered chairs,” he says.
“There was green liquid in a tube on the wall and its levels were going down as I went down. At the bottom, these doors slid open in front of me and it was very light and bright. I remember thinking, ‘Oh, this is it! I’m going...’”
It was at that moment Grahame heard Paula’s voice pleading, “He’s not dead. Bring him back.”
Paula also clearly remembers the exact moment. “I was telling him, ‘You’ve got to come back,’” back, she says, shedding a tear. . “Come back to me. Don’t t leave me alone.”
Grahame recalls what happened next. “I didn’t go through those doors... . and the next thing I knew w
I woke up in ICU [intensive care unit].”
It was later revealed that as Paula spoke, sensors attached to Grahame’s brain lit up – the special extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (EMCO) system was successfully doing the heart’s job of pumping oxygen to Grahame’s brain.
“Every Christmas since is the best gift we can have and it’s all thanks to the Prince of Wales Hospital, Hospital,” he says.