Chris Stear turned 70 in June and celebrated the milestone by doing 70 push-ups non-stop on a Gold Coast beach.
A few weeks later his health took a sudden turn.
"I came back from a visit to New Zealand and thought I might have long COVID, because I'm really tired," he said.
"Rapid onset exhaustion, no chest pain, no nothing."
He visited his general practitioner (GP), who performed a heart test that showed Mr Stear was missing an occasional heartbeat, but he was told that it was considered normal.
The former ambulance officer then saw a cardiologist who conducted a regular ECG, or electrocardiogram, which provides a graph of a heart's electrical activity.
"Then they gave me a stress [exercise] ECG which didn't stress me at all because I was really fit," he said.
"I do Burleigh hill three or four times a week ... so I was feeling really good.
"[The cardiologist] said the normal ECG was perfectly normal, but there's a couple of things with the other one [exercise ECG], so we'll send you for an angiogram."
The results of the angiogram, which looks at blood vessels in the heart, lungs and other parts of the body, shocked the former US Marine.
"The surgeon came in and said, 'Don't worry we've caught it early'," he said.
Blockages discovered in Mr Stear's coronary artery required triple-bypass surgery, which was performed via an open heart procedure.
He has been recovering and said he was lucky to be alive.
"[The surgeon] said to me, 'You're lucky you didn't do 72 push-ups'," he said.
"He said, 'You are the classic case that we read about, walking on the beach or running Burleigh hill, that falls over dead for no apparent reason'.
"I would never, ever have known if I hadn't gone to my GP first and gone on from there."
Early diagnosis a lifesaver
Associate Professor Atifur Rahman, a staff specialist in cardiology with Gold Coast Health, said Mr Stear was lucky his condition had been detected.
"Even if we don't have any risk factors, traditional risk factors like diabetes ... we can still get coronary heart disease (CHD)," he said.
"Every day we are getting older and the risk increases, and at the age of 70 years coronary artery disease is relatively common.
"The GP did the right thing, he looked at the patient and listened to the story and probably did some initial tests."
The heart specialist said people with a family history of CHD should have their cholesterol levels checked.
According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the prevalence of CHD increases rapidly with age, affecting around one in nine adults aged 75 years and over.
In 2020, CHD was the leading single cause of death in Australia, accounting for 16,600 deaths.
