Man's warning after being clinically dead for six minutes

Neale Jolly has a message for other middle-aged men, urging them to listen to their bodies and understand the signs of impending trouble.

Fit and in his 50s, Mr Jolly looked after himself, played tennis and cycled most days.

But one morning he had dropped off the pace, attributing his feeling of extreme cold to a virus.

It was actually Mr Jolly’s heart slowly shutting down.

“I’ve just got home, I collapsed on the side of the road,” he told a triple-0 operator.

“Something is wrong.”

“I was on my way out, I was gone … six minutes of my life I’ll never get back,” he told 7 News.

With Mr Jolly’s body temperature 10 degrees below normal, the men from Newport Fire Station began CPR while paramedics prepared drugs.

Incredibly two hours and a minor operation later, the man – from Williamstown in Melbourne’s southwest – was sitting up and eating breakfast.

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Mr Jolly says his heart attack was a wake-up call. He now pays even more attention to his health and advises other men of his age to do the same.

“Know what your cholesterol number is,” he said.

“Know what your heart rate is, know what your blood pressure is. Be aware of your own numbers – your weight, your age.”

Doctors say many men do not realise they have life-threatening conditions because there are no symptoms.

“We’d encourage you to have a chat with your GP, come in for a health check-up at least once a year,” Dr Abhi Verma, from the College of GPs, said.

“Let us have a really good look to make sure you’re in tip-top shape moving forwards.”