Neil Pretorius with his son Devon (photo: supplied)
On Wednesday, 17 May ago, former Tellytrack presenter turned National Retail Manager for Betting World, Neil Pretorius suffered a heart attack at their Kenilworth offices. Fortunately he is on the mend, but he chatted to the Sporting Post about the experience.
Neil admitted that he’d been having chest pains for a couple of weeks leading up to the attack. “I don’t smoke or drink, but I had a feeling maybe something was amiss somewhere. About two weeks ago, I wrote my sister and my girlfriend Ann’s name and number on a piece of paper and gave it to Angie at Betting World and said if anything happened to me, those were the people she needed to contact.”
“I went into the office at Kenilworth and was not feeling great. In all honesty, I should have gone to hospital the night before, but there had been a robbery on the Tuesday night, so I felt I had to go to work the next morning. Just after lunchtime, I felt a heavy pressure on my chest. I tried to get up and collapsed. So I got up, gathered my things and told the girl at the front desk I thought I was having a heart attack. I got in my car and drove all the way to Sunningdale. I have to say, I drove like a rally car driver – lights flashing and in the bus lane, you name it. I have to say the service at the hospital was brilliant. I arrived, told them I thought it was a heart attack and they took me straight in and got me stabilised. They did an ECG and confirmed that it was a heart attack and from there it was straight into theatre.”
Neil was immediately admitted for surgery and the medical team implanted a large stent. “It seems to be a genetic thing. Both my father and his father died of heart attacks in their late 50’s and the ECG showed that I had had a series of small heart attacks in the two weeks leading up to this one. Thank goodness I went in when I did, or I might not have survived another one,” he says soberly.
The procedure took well over an hour, but the stent has done the job. The artery deviation that had closed down has been reopened and thanks to the improved blood flow, a number of other capillaries that had been affected have also been improved by up to 90%. “What they do these days is amazing. They usually go in through the groin, so I’ve had a full valet!” he jokes, “but in the end they went in through my wrist.”
Neil has been getting stronger every day and had his first outing to watch his son Devon play rugby on Saturday afternoon. He asked to thank everyone for the flood of messages and well wishes and says that he will be back at his desk this week.
