RTÉ PRESENTER MICHAEL Lyster has said he believes he would be dead if he had not accidentally left his phone in a friend’s car.
The sports anchor suffered a heart attack at his home earlier this month, and described it as “a bit of a stir”.
Speaking to RTÉ’s Today with Sean O’Rourke, Lyster said he just been dropped home after an evening of golf, and when his friend, Irish Independent journalist Vincent Hogan, drove away, he remembered he had left his phone in the car.
I rang him from the house phone and said ‘Hogie, I’ve left my phone in the car, would you mind just swinging back?’
“He was greeted with the sight of me lying on the floor. He shouted for Anne who started CPR.”
The ambulance took around ten minutes to arrive and Anne was basically keeping me alive at that stage. Even as the ambulance pulled up outside the house, they were on the phone to Vincent saying ‘We’re outside, but tell her not to stop’”
Lyster said that without the CPR, he would have died.
If I had not left the phone in the car, I was a goner [...] I would have been found dead in the morning in the hallway.
He said the experience has made him “very aware of the broader picture of life, how things can suddenly be snatched away from you.”
The Sunday Games presenter said he is recovering well, has had a defibrillator fitted in his chest, and expects to return to television in July.
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