Ryder Cup This article is more than 9 years oldInterviewBernard Gallacher: my cardiac arrest poleaxed me – I was medically dead
This article is more than 9 years oldDonald McRaeSurviving a cardiac arrest and a coma has led the former Ryder Cup golf captain to campaign for more public defibrillators"I died, medically speaking, three times last summer," Bernard Gallacher says calmly as he explains why he has grown used to thinking about mortality and the mysteries of an after-life in the most unlikely of settings. The 65-year-old former golfer, who played eight Ryder Cups and captained Europe three times in the competition, looks around a hushed room at the plush Wentworth Club in Surrey. "The funny thing is that someone here, a member, came up to me and said: 'I just want to ask you a question: is there anything on the other side?' He thought I might have some answers for him because, just like Fabrice Muamba, I had been clinically dead. I said: 'I don't think it quite works that way …'"
Gallacher is an undemonstrative man but the circumstances he endured last August, when a cardiac arrest stopped his heart repeatedly and left him in a coma for seven days, have marked him. He shakes his head and murmurs: "I'm still having an out-of-body experience right now. I have no recollection of what happened and so it's very difficult to register something which still seems surreal."
The power of Gallacher's story is underlined by the quietness of its telling. He relives his near-death experience like a slightly dazed tourist describing a visit to a strange country. But Gallacher takes care to get the details right – for he knows that explaining clearly what happened to him will bolster the campaign he and his wife now lead to raise awareness of the need for defibrillators at golf clubs and as many public venues as possible. Gallacher "died" three times; and three times a defibrillator ensured that his heart began beating again.
"I had a cardiac arrest rather than a heart attack – which is associated with the plumbing of the heart, like a coronary with blocked arteries," he says. "Pain is associated with a heart attack. There are symptoms attached to a heart attack. You feel breathless. You don't feel well. The danger of a cardiac arrest is that it just happens. It's about the electrical currents of the heart. It goes into a rhythm and then it stops. There would not have been many fitter 23-year-olds than Fabrice Muamba and he would've been monitored regularly by the club [Bolton Wanderers]. But there are no symptoms or warnings and it happened to him the same way as me. I was just about to stand up and talk at a golf function in Aberdeen. People tell me that I fell over like I was hit by a boxer. I was poleaxed. I was just about to say something and …"
Gallacher clicks his fingers and mimes falling flat on his face. He laughs dryly. "Some people thought it was part of my act. Slapstick comedy before a Ryder Cup speech."
He shrugs when asked if it's difficult to relive that fateful day. "It's actually not disconcerting. I just know that circumstances contrived to keep me alive. There were two nurses at the hotel where I was speaking who knew exactly what they were doing. One nurse was a sister of the secretary at Bathgate [Gallacher's first golf club]. I recently met her and, funnily enough, she thought I was slurring my speech that day. She didn't like the look of me when I stood up. Apparently, I started to go a bit grey, and to sweat. But I can't remember it."
An unlikely chain of coincidences rescued him – the first being that he was attended to immediately by that experienced A&E nurse. "She gave me mouth-to-mouth for 20 minutes before they got the defibrillator going. Apparently, I played golf earlier that day with this guy who teaches people how to use defibrillators as part of his health and safety work. He got the hotel defibrillator working."
During a fraught trip in the ambulance, Gallacher's heart stopped completely again and again. "They had to use the defibrillator three times. A South African, Doctor [Mark] Bloch, saved me three times in the ambulance. In terms of the heart not working, I really was gone. I was medically dead. But he kept me going. I was very lucky."
The prognosis still seemed bleak when Gallacher was wheeled into the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. "My family were told the bad news," he says. "They then phoned our family doctor and he couldn't reassure them. He said it doesn't sound good. Doctors just don't want to give false hope.
"I was in a coma for seven days and when I woke up I saw all the family by the bed. I had tubes up me. But I felt perfectly well and so I thought: 'What's going on here?' They told me what had happened. I have no recollection of it. This is where it gets very strange."
Gallacher leans forward and maps out the itinerary of his lost days. "I was coming from a family holiday in Gibraltar and flying to Gatwick. After landing at Gatwick I went to my house in Ascot. The taxi waited while I got my stuff and then he took me to Heathrow. I flew to Aberdeen and the guy organising the event picked me up. We had a meal. The next day I played golf with various people. I then went back to the hotel to give my speech. But my last actual memory is going into Gibraltar airport. The rest is gone."
Does a lack of oxygen cause the brain to shut down? "Yes. The doctors tell me it's a kind of safety mechanism – they didn't seem worried about it. But it does concern me. It was two days and every detail disappeared. I then had seven days in the coma so I was left with nine days of which I have no memory."
Gallacher looks well today and he says, almost cheerfully: "I take seven pills a day. I also have an implant here. Can you see it? It stands quite proud."
He points to a bump in his chest which contains the implant. "It's permanent and it has been triggered – twice – last November. The first one I wasn't sure about. It was in my office and I fell over. I was severely bruised so I knew something happened. The second time was about two weeks later. I went upstairs on a Friday evening and the grandchildren were around. I stood up and felt something was happening. I shouted: 'You had better come up.' I was on the floor when they got to me but the implant had kicked in. I wasn't pole-axed this time. I slithered down.
"Kirsty [Gallacher, the Sky Sports presenter], my eldest daughter, and my wife reached me as I was coming to. I spent the weekend in hospital and they said on the Monday: 'You had an arrhythmia on 22 November' – and they gave me the exact time because the implant is like a computer – 'and you had one two weeks previously.'
"My consultant said it's nothing to worry about. We just have to get the pills right – so we changed the beta-blockers and I've been fine since then. The consultant said it's a genetic fault. But, with the right medication, the chances are it won't happen again."
Have all these incidents changed him? "Um," Gallacher says before lapsing into a long and thoughtful pause. "I'm a Catholic and I go to church but I don't feel religious about this. I don't pray any more than I used to. I know I've changed a little on the inside but outwardly it hasn't – apart from the fact that I'm not allowed to drive a car any more but I don't feel like I'm on borrowed time. People do feel immortal and it's only when something like this happens that you consider your mortality much more closely. I'm now more aware that there is an end. I just don't know when it will be.
"I think my family have been more traumatised. It was very hard for Lesley [his wife]. So after I recovered she said we really need to take this opportunity to help people and have this awareness campaign to try to get a defibrillator into as many golf clubs as possible.
"Around 100,000 people in the UK suffer from cardiac arrest every year. And if there is a defibrillator around you have over a 50% chance of survival. If not your chances reduce to around 5%. Those statistics are frightening – but they inspired my wife. She's the driving force behind the campaign. We're going to run with it until the Ryder Cup in September and Lesley will remain involved with the Arrhythmia Alliance."
Gallacher, who also represents Golf Care, a company which insures golfers, is not the archetypal victim of a heart condition. He does not smoke, drinks moderately, exercises regularly and does not suffer from undue stress. But his genetic flaw is a reminder that anyone could be affected by an irregular heartbeat. "I'm not an irascible guy," he says wryly. "I don't get too excited. I've won golf tournaments and you don't do that if you get overexcited. You have to keep calm. That's the trick of golf."
During his Ryder Cup-playing days he beat Lee Trevino and the greatest of all golfers, Jack Nicklaus, in singles competition. If Colin Montgomerie is held up as the personification of the Ryder Cup, Gallacher has a claim to be just as representative of two contrasting eras. "Monty personifies the spirit but I played during a period of great American strength. Colin was playing at a time when we were expected to win. But I had my moments. I beat Nicklaus in 1977 but Jack would have forgotten. I was four up after four and then hung on. Then I holed a monster putt at the 17th to go one up and beat him on the last green."
His links with the Ryder Cup remain strong. Gallacher will again work as a BBC specialist summariser in September and he is close to Paul McGinley, Europe's captain, who lives near him. McGinley and Gallacher often meet to play golf and discuss this year's clash against the US. His nephew, Stephen Gallacher, is also hoping to make McGinley's team.
Gallacher lingers over an old photograph of him leaping in the air as a jubilant Ryder Cup captain. "That was 1995 at Oakhill, when Philip Walton beat Jay Haas on the last hole – which meant we had won the Ryder Cup again. I'd lost the two previous matches as captain and they had been desperately close. That was a relief because I almost thought there was something wrong with my captaincy. It was a truly great moment. I didn't know I could jump that high … maybe that triggered the cardiac arrest!"
His chuckle hangs in the crisp morning air and then, tellingly, Gallacher returns to some very different moments – when his heart stopped. "I think I'm still coming to terms with it. It hasn't really sunk in how close I was to not being around but you put your trust in the doctor and if he says I'm going to be all right I'll believe him – and keep taking the pills."
Bernard Gallacher is an ambassador for Golf Care, the UK's leading provider of specialist golf insurance
Explore more on these topicsShareReuse this contentncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaKugpL%2B1e5FpaG1nkaW%2FcH6XaJmeqp6Wv6V5xpqjpZmTnbKzecaoo59lk5a%2FpbXAnGSaqqKawLV5w56dopqinrmtrdOoqQ%3D%3D