My name is Andy Read, and I live in Sudbury, south Suffolk with my wife Sharon. I have two sons Oli and Sam, daughters-in-law Cass and Charlotte and a three-year-old granddaughter Aoife (the daughter of Oli and Cass).

My out of hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) occurred on the morning of Saturday 25 August, the 2018 Bank Holiday weekend. I’m writing this on 22 August 2024, nearly six years later, and it feels quite surreal to think what occurred.

When I had my OHCA there had been no indication as I was reasonably fit and had not been feeling unwell. Only six weeks earlier I’d climbed Helvellyn via Striding Edge and down via Swirral Edge.

I collapsed in the kitchen in front of my wife, Sharon who thankfully had knowledge of CPR. Sharon put me in position where I had an airway, called 999 and got a neighbour to help. Thankfully the neighbour had recently completed a first aid course (my first piece of good fortune), and they gave me CPR until the first responder arrived (my second piece of good fortune). The first responder arrived within minutes and gave me four shocks and continued CPR.

The East Anglian Air Ambulance (EAAA) intercepted and triaged the call (my third piece of good fortune) – the helicopter took off from Cambridge and was in Sudbury within 20 mins from take-off. They managed to stabilise me for 90 minutes and I will be eternally grateful to the members of the team – two of which I’ve been lucky enough to stay in contact with - Page Chamberlain and Rosh Jaypalan.

I was then airlifted to Basildon Cardiac Unit (BCU). Incredibly, this nationally recognised cardiac hospital doesn’t have a dedicated helicopter landing place and so I was dropped off on the golf course. Sorry to any golfers if I interrupted your day!

I then stayed in BCU for three and a half weeks in a coma and after two weeks, I had a perforated bowl and subsequently a stoma fitted. Thankfully was reversed 15 months later. Like many I christened the stoma and mine was called Donald, I’ll leave this up to your imagination to consider why.

Prior to the OHCA I had been Head of Safety for a national leisure management company. One of the many projects that I’d been working on for the previous 15-20 years was to encourage every leisure centre in the country to have a defibrillator. The defibrillators in the company I worked for were fully used on average once every six weeks for the 24 million visitors we had each year.

Six years after my OHCA I'm cycling, playing walking football, walking and swimming with my 3-year-old granddaughter, Aoife.

I’m also working on three voluntary projects:

• Trying to get a publicly accessible defib within two minutes of everyone in Sudbury.
• Facilitating a group called Sudbury Sporting Memories, where 50+ people over 60 meet each week.
• Working with the Royal Life Saving Society (RLSS) nationally to lead a project to give lifeguards a secondary level of safety with a technological solution.

All in all, the past six years have been the best of my life and all that really matters now is family and friends, blue skies, green trees and smiling faces.