“I thought I was in Bali, I’d been kidnapped, drugged and people had stolen all my stuff because I couldn’t find anything,” says Ryan Campbell. In reality, the former Australia wicketkeeper was in a Stoke hospital and awake after a week spent in a coma.
On a family visit to England last April, Campbell had been playing with his two young children in a Cheshire playground when he suffered a cardiac arrest. Another parent present came to his aid before Campbell was treated at Royal Stoke University Hospital. For the recently turned 50-year-old, the events formed part of a “seven-day window of nothing”, his memory only going as far as getting on the flight he took from Schiphol airport to arrive in the country. His friends and family can remember, and it’s their experiences he reflects on.
