RTÉ Sport presenter Michael Lyster has spoken about surviving a recent serious heart attack and said he is hoping to return to his role on The Sunday Game before the end of July.
The 61-year-old Galway man has been The Sunday Game anchor since 1984 and collapsed after a major cardiac arrest at his south Dublin home on 5 June.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio’s Today with Sean O’Rourke, Michael said: “I’m feeling not too bad. It has been a rough couple of weeks. I’m not clear yet but getting there and I’m still above ground anyway which is the most important thing!”
While not giving an exact date for a return to our television screens, Michael said it would be soon and “in a couple of weeks’ time”.
He added: “I haven’t yet put a date on it but I’ve been talking to the lads in the Sunday Game about when I might come back.”
Michael described how his wife, Anne, saved his life by administering CPR, pounding his chest and giving the kiss of life, for the ten minutes or so it took the ambulance to arrive at his home.
“Joe Brolly has sent me several texts. In fact he sent me one the other night again, which was an order basically ‘You mind yourself’" - Michael Lyster
“She had done the first-aid courses and the fact she knew what to do kept me alive. She saved my life because ten minutes would have been too long.”
He said it was a huge stroke of luck that he had left his mobile phone behind in friend and fellow sports journalist Vincent Hogan’s car - because it was Hogan who discovered him collapsed unconscious in the hallway when he returned with the phone a few minutes after dropping Michael off at home.
“If I had not left the phone in a car I was a goner, because I would have been found dead in hallway the next morning,” said Michael.
Michael spent ten days in hospital and has had a defibrillator fitted in his chest to avoid a repeat of another serious heart attack.
“It is fitted just above my heart which is a little machine basically. If my heart goes out of order again then basically it is supposed to give it a bit of a kick start.”
Michael said he has been inundated with well wishes from Sunday Game viewers, GAA fans and of course Sunday Game panellists Pat Spillane and Joe Brolly.
“Joe Brolly has sent me several texts. In fact he sent me one the other night again, which was an order basically, ‘You mind yourself’. That’s a recurring text from Joe.”
It goes without saying that that sentiment is shared by all and hopefully Michael will return to The Sunday Game hot seat very soon.
For more listen to Today with Sean O’Rourke, Monday to Friday 10am on Radio 1
