What's the time, Mr Wolfe?

by Jessica Owers

In July last year, a near-fatal heart attack almost called time on trainer Steve Wolfe. He tells Jessica Owers what it was like to not only survive, but to change his life in the aftermath.

They say that when your time is up, it’s up, but no one told trainer Steve Wolfe On July 26 last year, the 76-yearold racetrack veteran had a heart attack, the episode so severe that he flatlined three times.

“When I woke up in the hospital, I was looking up at my wife, three of my kids and a couple of my best mates,” he recalls “They said theoretically I’d died on the way to the hospital, and then twice on the operating table.”

Wolfe has told his story a handful of times to journalists, but when he has talked to everyday people about it, he has been stunned by the occurrence of heart issues among his peers.

“Every second bloke I’ve talked to has had a stent put in or a pacemaker,” he says “I don’t think we realise how much of this is really around.”

Wolfe, unfortunately, has joined a long list of statistics about heart attacks in Australia Men are twice as likely as women to suffer one in their lives, and 75 per cent more likely to die from one compared to women Death from heart attack, while decreasing, accounts for one in 25 deaths in Australia every year, or one death every 80 minutes It is sobering data, especially since the first symptom of heart disease is often fatal.

“The strange thing is if I didn’t actually know it was a heart attack, I wouldn’t know I’d had one at all because I don’t feel any different now to what I did before I had it,” the trainer says.

The day of Wolfe’s episode, he’d been at trackwork early in the morning, watching sets of the 35 to 40 racehorses he has in work It was a Friday, and he went home unusually early, telling his wife Maureen that he wasn’t feeling good around his throat He went to lie down but he was so agitated he couldn’t be still, and Maureen, exhausting all the usual cures of wet facecloth and rest, eventually called for an ambulance It took the paramedics less than 10 minutes to arrive at the door.

“They told me they’d get a wheelchair to take me to the ambulance, which they did, and then they asked me if I was alright to get up onto the bed they’d pulled out, which I was," Wolfe recalls “Away we went to Royal Perth and the bloke in the ambulance was talking away to me, strapping me in, and that’s the last I remember Three hours later I woke up looking at everyone.”

Maureen, who has a nursing background and who at one point had spent 12 months in a hospital emergency department, says none of the symptoms she saw in her husband suggested heart attack.

“I was thinking angina,” she says “When the ambulance took him away I thought he’d be in emergency for two hours before anything got done, so I went back inside, finished my cup morning and night, and I’ve never taken it.

I’ve just lived on a Ventolin inhaler Since this whole thing, though, I’ve taken the Seretide every day and I’ve hardly picked up my inhaler.”

If he could do his time over, Wolfe might have made better decisions about his asthma, and he isn’t keen to have the same regrets about his heart.

“All I can say is that people need to get checked,” he says. “We discovered that my heart was running on about 20 per cent, and your heart is not like a broken toe or a toothache It’s the main part of the body I would advise anyone who is a bit overweight, who has drunk a bit more than they needed to, to get regular check-ups because it’s pretty serious, and it’s pretty final.”

The moral to the story is straightforward, and Wolfe hopes that by talking about his experience, more men in the racing game will be motivated to check their hearts People listen, but they also can’t help asking Wolfe what it was like to die three times.

“I have no idea,” he says “It was just like waking up after an operation But I can tell you that I didn’t see anything on the other side.”