I coach and it’s all about these players and trying to get them to play at a high level, compete at a high level and win. But at the end of the day I mean this is what we do. I’m excited about the game because I haven’t been in that atmosphere in a long, long time, man.Īnd to be able to step back out on that floor in front of the fans that’s going to come out and support us, I’m really looking forward to it. MIKE WOODSON: I don’t know, you’ve been doing this so long. How many friends and family will you have at the game tomorrow night? And second, are your emotions heading into this game any different than they were, say, heading into your first game with the Knicks or the Hawks or any other team? So we’ll know more today, after we get out of practice, in terms of where the status of both of those guys. We had a nice little workout with him and Tamar Bates. He scrimmaged a little yesterday with us. MIKE WOODSON: I’m going to know more today. Tomorrow health-wise how is everybody doing? Is there anybody you expect to be out? And specifically Michael Durr, what’s his status going into the first game?
“Now I’m officially not dead,” McCardell adds.A full transcript, via ASAP Sports, is available below: “If they say you look crummy and you should go to a doctor, go to a doctor.” “Listen to your camera guy, listen to your editor, whoever it is, your wife,” he says. John's Ambulance.Īnd when I ask McCardell what advice he might give to his former self?
He’s now advocating for anyone who is able to get trained in how to administer CPR with organizations like the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, or St. We're interrupted when a golden leaf falls from a tree above us right into his hand.Īnd Wong adds one big reason McCardell likely survived is not luck, but because of where he collapsed, with trained professionals just seconds away. “Almost like an insurance policy,” Wong says.
Wong calls the “fancy pacemaker” like a “paramedic in your pocket." A very strong shock, like the kick of a horse, I’m told.” “If it gets out of beat, this thing sends a shock to it. “This is me and my defibrillator,” McCardell says, showing me the outline, about the circumference of a golf ball, under his breast pocket. Somewhere in those three days, he received a special implant. “The heart, essentially, instead of beating, quivers,” Wong says.Īnd he was transferred to Vancouver General Hospital’s cardiac intensive care unit. Something, Wong says, that unlike a heart attack, doesn’t often come with clear warning signs, and even if it did, they're typically unique to each person. He describes the cardiac arrest as “an electrical problem where the rhythm of the heart changed from a regular one to a chaotic one.” “He knew what he was doing so he crushed right through the ribs, broke two ribs so he could get right to the heart,” McCardell says.
Graham Wong, brought McCardell back to life. Noah Alexander, as well as cardiologist Dr. You were dead,'” McCardell recalls.Īn emergency room team, including Dr. “(My doctor) said, 'I never expected to see you again, ever. McCardell took a few steps, then collapsed in the driveway His wife’s manager insisted on driving the pair to the UBC hospital. “Would I be bright enough to think that because I’m dizzy and I have to hold onto a wall and I have to sit down, that something’s wrong? No!” McCardell said. Hindsight being what it is, he admits, perhaps, he should have listened. “And then it stopped.”īut a type of irregular heartbeat known as ventricular fibrillation.Īnd it seemed to come out of nowhere, though in retrospect, McCardell says, those close to him, from his CTV News photographer, to his editor, to his wife’s boss, were telling him, he didn’t look well. “The heart went out of rhythm, that’s all, like it was squirting out when it should have been squirting in,” he says. Somehow, in the span of a few short weeks, he seems to have grown uncomfortably at ease with the fact for a few moments or minutes, he’s not sure exactly how long, his heart shut down. “That’s what everybody wants to hear: you saw a light,” McCardell says. "I could touch the blackness, I could taste the blackness."Īnd somewhere in that, he thinks, was light. “I was in a blackness – total, absolute blackness," he says. Mike McCardell doesn’t remember much about those three days in September.Īnd what he does recall, he tries to reason, doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense.