In fact, by the time the day and long night were over Ian had literally “died” five times; been airlifted to the John Hunter Hospital; was stabilised by medical teams in Muswellbrook and Newcastle; and had undergone CPR for 20 minutes on a hot road surface.

Several days ago the patient and the paramedic, who began the fight to save his life, were reunited.

Val Lagerstrom was driving her husband, Ian, around Muswellbrook on a hot November afternoon while he delivered catalogues, a job he’d been doing for years.

The couple turned into Riesling Street and Val began a conversation with her husband.

“He didn’t answer me,” said Val, “and when I looked across he was slumped in the passenger seat and I shook him and called his name and he didn’t answer me.”

At that very moment, Muswellbrook paramedic Keith Diemar was pulling up outside his Riesling Street home.

“We’d just finished a meeting at the station and I was ducking home to pick up some dinner that my wife, Julie, had prepared,” he said.

“I just stepped out of the ambulance and I noticed Val was trying to rouse Ian and she looked very concerned so I started to head over there when she said, ‘Come quick’.

“Ian was unresponsive, he was hardly breathing at all and he was quite pale and I realised he was having a cardiac arrest,” Mr Diemar said.

“So I started to dig him out of the vehicle because he was covered in pamphlets and I needed to get him on to a hard surface to start compressions on his chest.”

At the same time the Muswellbrook paramedic started CPR on Ian Lagerstrom, he also began a conversation with the Newcastle control centre requesting back-up.

“I was carrying a portable radio on my shoulder and I was communicating with Newcastle telling them what I had,” he said.

While Keith waited for support he got Ian’s wife, Val, to run to the ambulance to collect a defibrillator and other equipment.

Val said what she did was nothing.  

Keith Diemar begged to differ, describing her actions as “pivotal”.

It wasn’t long before Muswellbrook paramedic Maree Fowler got the 1A notification, which means cardiac arrest.

She arrived to find Keith doing compressions and Val doing her best to manage the airway.

“His ventricles were quivering and they weren’t getting blood anywhere around his body,” Maree said.

The two paramedics continued their work, stabilised Ian, got him into the ambulance, drove him to Muswellbrook Hospital and handed over their very ill patient.

The rest, as they say in the classics, is the best possible medical outcome you could hope for in such a life and death situation.

What about Ian in all this?

He sat on the fence in Riesling Street, where a few months earlier his heart had stopped, and said he couldn’t remember a thing.

“I’m still not 100 per cent yet, but I’m alive and I just wanted to say thank you,” Ian said.

Val described the paramedics as “heroes” and Keith Diemar reminded everyone why there was a reunion at all.

“Ian is alive because he got early chest compression and early defibrillation,” he said.

“I hope people understand that.”