Dave Dore
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Type of Incident: Heart attack
Date of Incident: 27/06/2010
Time: 10am
Location: Coldharbour,
Just
weeks before his illness, keen mountain bike rider Dave Dore had been thinking
about taking a ride in a helicopter.
By
fate, he says, that’s exactly what happened when he found himself being flown
to hospital in the Surrey Air Ambulance.
The
52-year-old was out riding along a route called Summer Lightning with his
partner Linda Luckin when he began feeling chest pains.
He
recalled: “At first I felt a bit of discomfort then my chest felt a bit tight.
I thought I had indigestion then it seemed to turn into heartburn.
“All
of a sudden I could not feel my arms and I was beginning to think it was a bit
strange. Then I had bad pins and needles in my hands and started sweating
profusely.
“I
got off the bike and walked up to where Linda was and told her I didn’t feel
very well. At that point I knew I wasn’t going to get back to the car. I told
her to call an ambulance.”
Linda
ran to a nearby house to raise the alarm and a surgeon who lived there went to
Dave’s aid and administered the blood-thinning drug aspirin.
A
passing jogger also dialled 999 and it took the helicopter just 20 minutes to
get to the scene and airlift Dave to
He
said: “I was extremely lucky all the way through from Linda finding the surgeon,
the jogger who stopped on the track and the helicopter taking me to a hospital
that specialises in cardiac care.
“It
was luck after luck after luck and everything fell into place because it could
so easily have gone badly wrong. For the first two weeks it didn’t sink in and
it felt like a really weird dream.
“Everyone
said to me that out of all the people they knew I was the least likely person
it could happen to because I’m so fit and active.”
Dave,
an HGV driver for Cranleigh Freight Services, had no history of heart trouble
prior to his cardiac arrest.
Two
weeks later, he visited the crew who saved him – pilot
It
was the charity’s Open Day and he decided to go back up in a helicopter, this
time for a pleasure flight with London Helicopter Centre.
He
added: “Bizarrely enough, I was saying only a few weeks before my heart attack
that I wanted to have a helicopter ride. When I was in the air ambulance I was
facing the ceiling.
“As
we took off I was desperate to look out of the window because I was in the most
beautiful part of the countryside and I couldn’t see any of it.”
