In November last year, the 79-year-old Launceston man and his wife, Julie, were walking back to their car after visiting friends in Trevallyn.

It was a wet night, and the couple was walking uphill to the car when chest pain hit Mr Geard.

“My wife said, ‘I’ll go get the car’, but I kept walking, as a stupid man would,” he said.

“That happened three or four times and then my wife said, ‘no, you have to go and see someone.”

Mr Geard had been having slight chest pains for about 12 months prior to that and thought it was his chronic bronchitis.

After seeing his GP, Mr Geard was referred to Charles Clinic Heart Care for an angina stress test.

“Of the five that were tested there, one was given the ‘OK’, I believe another had a triple, another had a quadruple and two had quintuple artery blockages – my mate John and I. 

“I was shocked – I’d never heard of a quintuple before. I had a phone call from the Royal Melbourne Private and they said, ‘be over here by Tuesday’.”

Mr Geard had open heart surgery on the Wednesday.

“For the next three or four days, I can’t remember too much except that my wife was always there. The fourth day, I was in intensive care.”

However, a few days later, Mr Geard had to have a second surgery, on his prostate.

“From then on, I started to improve, and could do laps around the cardio floor. It was very slow but I improved with time, so much so that I was allowed to be sent home – something up until then I wasn’t sure I would be returning home.

“It was really for me a dream come true, and some of my fellow patients thought I would not make it home.”

Mr Geard freely admits when he arrived back in Tasmania, he “balled his eyes out”.

“It’s a magic place. I’m still here and I’m still in my beloved state. I came home to all my fruit trees out the back.

“Being a carpenter and joiner when I was younger, my wife told me my surgeon Michael O’Keefe, who was born in Tassie and loves Tassie as much as I do, he said my heart is brilliant, but all the roadwork into it was just 85 to 95 per cent blocked.”

Upon returning to Launceston, Mr Geard said he did not want to go to rehab.

“But then, when I went, I didn’t want it to finish. I realise now that the most important thing is rehab.”

He went twice a week for six weeks to Charles Clinic Healthy Living, where exercise physiologists Josh Burk and Jemma Preece gave him exercise programs to practice there and at home.

“It was quite amazing. What we’ve got beating in our chest, we just take for granted – this brilliant little machine in here, we just take it for granted.

“I’ve got all copies of the exercises they gave me so that I can do them at home, and Josh said, ‘I know you’re doing a lot at home’.”

He and Julie now walk everyday.

“I am extremely careful with what I eat. Now, we do really read labels, because everything has sugar in it and salt.”​