MAY 16, 2018 \ STARWEEKLY.COM.AU
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Above: MFB senior station officer Mick Campbell, Neale Jolly with his artwork gift to his rescuers, firefighter Dale Allan and leading firefighter Adrian Lovelace. (Damjan Janevski) Above right: Neale, keen cyclist and bottom right, in hospital. (Pictures: Supplied)
Neale’s wild ride By Goya Dmytryshchak
For six minutes, Williamstown’s Neale Jolly was clinically dead. “I’ve been to the other side and back, and it’s better on this side of the soil, let me tell you,” he said. Last week, Mr Jolly was reunited with the firefighters who helped save him as part of the Emergency Medical Response program between Ambulance Victoria and the MFB, now in its 20th year and aimed at improving cardiac arrest survival rates. Mr Jolly, 58, had been cycling with mates one early morning last Easter, when he felt like he was freezing. He had been on the way back from Altona and on the home stretch when he
fell to the back of the pack with which he was riding, eventually pulling over and into a bus shelter. “I didn’t know what was wrong … and I thought, ‘I’d better get out of here’,” he said. “People going past in the morning would have just been thinking I was catching a bus, so what I had to do was lie down in the middle of the road to get someone’s attention. “You wouldn’t believe how many cars didn’t stop, but finally someone did and I got a ride back to Williamstown.” Back home, Mr Jolly had a shower but was still freezing cold. He called his daughter, who called an ambulance. Paramedics and firefighters arrived and requested he go to hospital for tests.
‘‘
It’s better on this side of the soil, let me tell you
’’
- Neale Jolly
“I said, ‘Oh, come on guys, I’ve got to be at work in an hour’,” Mr Jolly said. “They said, ‘Oh no, you’re pretty bad – can you walk to the ambulance?’ Next thing you know, I’m holding his arm … I’ve got my head on his shoulder.” Almost at the ambulance, Mr Jolly collapsed and was “gone” for six minutes. Last week, Mr Jolly was happy to meet up with the MFB firefighters who helped paramedics bring him back, including then Newport senior
station officer Mick Campbell, now at Footscray. Mr Campbell said Mr Jolly’s episode was called a “witnessed cardiac arrest”. “I jumped on his chest, started doing the compressions,” Mr Campbell said. “If there was ever a moment where you could have all the things going for you, that was it, because he had a witnessed arrest by a paramedic with fire response right there within two minutes. “I remember looking up, seeing his daughter watching us, the firies and the paramedics, and then I was looking down at Neale [thinking], ‘That could me, that could be my daughter’. This is close to home.” Mr Jolly was back at work after two weeks, cycling after three and playing competition tennis four weeks later.