Talking to strangers became my therapy
The footballing legend opens up to AMY PACKER about life after his dramatic heart attack last October
THEY say a near-death experience can change you but Glenn Hoddle never imagined that suffering a heart attack on his 61st birthday would lead to a love of walking.
“It gives me thinking time and time to myself,” explains the football legend.
“I used to hate walking before – I’ve got a bad knee because of my football and that used to swell up – but I found I really looked forward to going out, walking in the rain, whatever. I’d put some earphones on and I was off.”
Time to himself was vital for the former England manager to process almost dying after collapsing on set at BT Sport’s television studios in east London last October.
The ex-Tottenham star’s heart stopped and his life was only saved because of the speedy action of a sound engineer, Simon Daniels, who restarted his heart using CPR and a defibrillator, breaking seven of his ribs in the process.
“I realise I was very lucky. If it hadn’t been for Simon I wouldn’t be here at all,” says Glenn.
Airlifted to hospital, doctors found that three of his coronary arteries were blocked and the fourth was functioning at just one per cent, meaning the father-ofthree needed to undergo a quadruple bypass at St Bartholomew’s in central London.
Recovery was slow – five weeks in hospital was followed by a period of convalescence at his home in Berkshire, cared for by his partner Lisa, 50.
WHILE his physical recovery has been a slog, it was the shock of the attack that has taken longest to deal with. “It came from nowhere,” says Glenn, who hadn’t eaten meat for 30 years and as a former sportsman was extremely active, regularly swimming, playing golf and going to the gym. He now believes he may have inherited heart issues from his father, whose clogged arteries were originally put down to smoking.
Initially, Glenn considered trauma counselling but didn’t feel he needed it in the end. “Because of the football and being recognised, wherever I’ve gone in the last nine months people want to talk to me [about the attack].
“Even at the airport strangers want to know how I’m doing.At first I thought: ‘Oh, this is going to be really tough’ but having to talk about what happened has been a part of my recovery.
“It’s been therapeutic to be open with people and I’ve found that really interesting.
“It means you don’t hide away from it or sit indoors and think about it too much.You are out there and you’re talking about what happened. I don’t go too in-depth but it’s constant. Ultimately, it was very good for me.”
Learning about other survivors’ stories has proved equally as helpful to Glenn as telling his own.
“At the very beginning [of my recovery] I couldn’t even watch
telly, then for a long time I couldn’t concentrate on reading at all, which was strange,” he recalls.
“The first thing I found which engaged me was a book called Life After Cardiac Arrest by Paul Swindell. It was obviously the thing I needed to read. People tell their own stories of their heart attacks and I found that very interesting.
“After something like this there are certain things emotionally and physically that you want to do but can’t and it gives you parallels so you can marry up what you’re going through with what others have experienced.”
One example was sneezing, something so normal, which Glenn found excruciating after surgery.
“Because they open up your sternum, sneezing becomes one of the hardest things ever. It was so painful,” he shudders.
“My shoulders used to lock up every time I sneezed because you’re trying to protect yourself.When I read the book I suddenly knew of five, six, seven other people who had been through the same thing.
“It helps because you think: ‘Don’t panic, it will go away’.You slowly get better and it just needs time. It was very positive for me.”
Glenn believes that the healthy eating regime he followed since his early career was paramount to his survival and because of this he has partnered with LoSalt to urge people to adopt small changes in their diets now, to put them in good shape for the future.
“I was incredibly lucky to survive my cardiac arrest and it’s now really important to me to highlight why everyone should be monitoring their health more and thinking about how making small changes like checking blood pressure regularly and reducing sodium intake, which can make a big difference,” he says.
In 2017, 11 million deaths were attributable to dietary risks, with excess sodium consumption ranked first for mortality among all men.
“I really wasn’t aware that having too much salt, the biggest source of sodium, in my diet could cause high blood pressure but it does.
“I’ve been making my children [Jamie, 27 and Zoe, 36, and Zara, 33] be careful about their diets and get their numbers checked.”
Glenn returned to television at the start of March but knew he needed to ease himself back in gently. My first time back was as a pundit on a Europa League game, filmed somewhere different in the BT Sport studios,” he says.
“I made sure I had a little walk around the area where it all happened. It was quite dark in there and I had it to myself.
“I can’t actually remember the incident at all now and think that worked in my favour. I just walked around the area, thinking and I found that really quite therapeutic.
“Then, three or four weeks later, I was ready to get back onto the Saturday morning show.
“I met other people who were there on the day, not just Simon but the guys who had grabbed the defibrillator, the ones who helped get me down to the ambulance.
“It was lovely to tell them how grateful I was for what they did.
“If the attack had happened anywhere else, I wouldn’t be here.”