Heart of a Champion

by Patrick Lindsay

  Sian called the ambulance and Greg headed to hospital again, this time for a 15-day stay in the intensive care unit. His doctors were baffled. Sian was desperate. Greg’s Mum was on her way over from Australia. He was spiralling into what seemed like a dark, bottomless pit. ‘These were the deepest, darkest days of my life. At the time I thought I was going to suffer these bloody awful shocks throughout my life, however long that would be. I was only thinking inside the lines and thinking the worst. The curtain seemed to be drawing closed.’

  When Greg was moved from the security of the ICU to the recovery ward, his anxiety levels rose again. ‘I just didn’t feel safe there. One night, my defib was kicking hard, one after the other, and I let out a great yell, “Oouuccchh!” It scared everyone around me, people flew from all angles, the nurses were baffled and they couldn’t find a doctor for quite a while.’

  At this stage Sian was struggling to cope with two young children as well as Greg’s attacks. She recalls the period as a blur. ‘I think I was in survival mode. Luckily my parents were, as always, calm and totally supportive. They took a lot of the pressure off and allowed me to give my support to Greg.’

  Greg went back into the intensive care unit for another stint there. He was given heavier medication as he awaited his sixth EP study. Noelene was also on hand to help after Sian called and asked her to come. ‘She immediately flew out for three weeks to be near Greg and me, and help me out with the new baby and Annie. Greg’s Mom was very calming to be around. Even though she was extremely concerned about Greg, she was just so wonderful to be with and talk with.’

  Noelene, however, was stunned by what her son had to endure. ‘I don’t think you realise the fear involved until you come in contact with something like this. The fear is there all the time, and I’d say in Greg’s case, going from being fit and never being sick to not knowing what was going to happen and with the kids and everything else, it was even worse. I know he was scared. It was a scary thing for all of us.’

  Once, after a series of defib shocks, Greg’s doctors gave him a drug called amiodorone, to which he was allergic, while they were trying to find a stabilising medication. He suffered an anaphylactic reaction. His throat began closing and he struggled to breathe. It was the second time Greg thought he was about to die.

  ‘I was trying to say something to the doctor like, “Tell Sian I love her and the kids.” I remember trying to get it out before my throat was closed off. And I thought about praying to God to look after my family. And that’s about it. That’s all I had time to think. That’s it. I just thought, “I cannot believe that I’m leaving this world before I’m 40 years old.” So I felt a little bit of anger and then I thought, “Please, just take care of Sian and the kids.”’ But again, he survived.

  Eventually, on 11 June, an opportunity opened for yet another EP study, and Greg was transferred to yet another hospital where the surgery was performed. It was easily the most complicated surgery he’d had to date and took about 10 hours. Each time the surgeons thought they’d located the problem and fixed it, another would appear. When they were about to finally wrap things up, Greg went into v-tach on the operating table and suffered a shock in front of the theatre team. Eventually, after an exhausting experience for all involved, the doctors completed their work and sent Greg to the recovery ward. They were optimistic that the problem had been brought under control, and all the post-operative signs supported this.

  Greg returned home, buoyed by renewed hopes that he could finally look forward to a period of relaxation and recuperation. That evening, his neighbours and good friends Roch and Heather Frey brought over some dinner. ‘As everyone fussed over me on the lounge and got me set up to eat, I was handed a plate of really beautiful-looking pesto pasta. I took the plate, but whammo! The plate went flying in the air, all over the couch, all over Heather and all over me.’

  Noelene looked on helplessly. ‘Paul and Paula had come around earlier, but Greg had sent them away because he didn’t feel well. That was unusual enough, because he loved having them around. Then I saw him just sitting there, and all of a sudden, he just screamed. It was terrible. He was thrown off the ground, the plate went in the air and his body was alive with this defibrillator.’

  It turned out that the shock was totally unnecessary: Greg’s defibrillator had been set up wrongly. But it took another ambulance ride to hospital to find that out. Greg was released the next day.

  At home, Sian and Noelene did everything around the house. But Greg’s demons were running wild. ‘I had so many mental scars, I couldn’t even move from the couch to go to the toilet without thinking I was going to receive a shock. I don’t think I left the house for around two weeks. I was confined to the couch and I wasn’t moving.’

  In the days after his 10-hour heart surgery, after suffering perhaps 40 defibrillation shocks, Greg was at his most fragile. Every room in his house was the scene of a shock, and each held echoes of the fear and pain. ‘When I walked through my house, all I could see was the doorway where I had six defibrillations, or right in front of the toilet door where I had one, or the lounge where I was shocked. Every time I moved through the house, I would walk gingerly. I couldn’t even breathe. I was even holding my stomach in a different way because I was trying to cocoon my body.’

  Greg’s doctors were confident his heart was strong enough and healthy enough to withstand most v-tach episodes, so they reset his defibrillator so it would only shock him if his heart rate hit 200 beats a minute. That gave him considerable comfort and greatly reduced the number of shocks.

  Greg knew he had to act to break out of his mental prison, but he found it impossible to take the first step. Sian arranged for a yoga teacher to help him relax, and soon they were doing two sessions a week at home, where Greg felt like a prisoner. He saw the benefits, but found it hard on his breathing. Sometimes he struggled.

  Still, Greg felt his mental strength growing. However, to his dismay, he found it increasingly difficult to handle the demands of his daughters. He felt pangs of guilt as he saw the pressure this threw onto Sian. She would take the girls out to give him some peace and quiet. She would do the shopping and look after the kids. Greg had never appreciated his wife more. Sian had become his source of inspiration and, along with his babies, she’d become his motivation to overcome his physical and mental obstacles. His problem was that he couldn’t find the words to express his feelings to her, and he didn’t know how to break out of the cycle of fear and depression. Sian began to find her burden growing heavier and heavier.

  ‘I wanted him to tell me how it was awful, so I could be there for him. I thought about this for a long time and I’ve had a lot of help to get through it. If he had been the one saying, “Oh my God, I can’t believe this is happening,” I would have risen up and been that rock that I’ve been for the last couple of years. He was the rock at first, but he was also the sick one.

  ‘It was a very difficult time, and it put a strain on our relationship. But we were soul mates. Otherwise we would never have lasted: there was so much stress and anxiety that just wasn’t talked about, and I felt that I just couldn’t do much to help. I felt I was not helping at all.’

  Sian knew she had to seek professional counselling. She felt strong, but she also felt depressed. From her perspective, Greg had the illness but he wasn’t taking control of it. That frustrated her. She tried to encourage Greg to take control but he wasn’t ready, and he came up with a range of excuses for his inaction. Sian found that if she pressed Greg for action, it would send him over the edge and he would retreat to his bed. The fact that Greg was able to deal with others, and even do some coaching, added to her frustration, despite knowing it helped Greg. ‘I had a problem with that because I was dealing with Greg when he was depressed. He didn’t feel good about himself and we took things out on each other. We were throwing things, bickering at each other and we never do that…we just don’t. It was like, “Don’t leave the toothpaste here,” and he would bicker at me an
d he was around the house all the time…Everything I did. I was like, “Oh, whatever.”’

  GREG REDISCOVERED THE JOY and colour in his life. He cherished his time with his daughters and Sian, and he BASKED IN THE WARMTH of his MANY FRIENDS, looking to the FUTURE with confidence.

  Chapter 14

  Fightback

  SIAN’S FIRST ATTEMPTS AT COUNSELLING DID LITTLE to help clarify her situation. Greg began seeing a psychiatrist, but he prescribed antidepressant drugs and Greg felt strongly that they were the wrong solution to his problems. Sian agreed. She realised that Greg was trying to deal with his fears just as he had dealt with his physical challenges during his career: by ignoring them and ploughing ahead as if they didn’t exist. He had always had the ability to push through his physical and mental barriers—of pain or exhaustion—but that was sport, and real life throws up far more difficult obstacles.

  ‘The problem was, Greg didn’t conceptualise many of the things he was experiencing at the time. He’s a person who deals with things inwardly. He has a difficult time analysing and regurgitating feelings and emotions. I’ve always been able to talk out problems, and I’ve found that when they’re brought out into the open I can see their extent and then figure out a way to deal with them. Greg kept his inner fears hidden a lot of the time and that made it hard for us to help him and, more importantly, for him to help himself.

  ‘I saw him struggle more than any other time. I suggested a lot of things and we had many heart to heart talks to try to get him to admit his pain. I knew he was going through tough times because he wasn’t the same man I married. On the outside he seemed like the old Greg, fun-loving and always happy. But to me he showed all his unhappiness, frustrations and fears. He had so many fears bottled up inside of him that for the first time it was hard for him to love or be loved. I became increasingly frustrated because Greg was closed up and scared to face what he needed to face and conquer.’

  First Sian, and later Greg, turned to one of Greg’s friends, life transformation expert Peter Crone, for advice. Greg and Peter had met through a mutual friend a decade earlier when they were both sponsored by sporting gear company Oakley—Greg as a champion triathlete and the mercurial Peter Crone as, in his own words, ‘an international man of mystery’. Peter was an English-born, jet-setting fitness guru, who had created an intriguing reputation as one who transformed some of the most famous bodies in Hollywood—his clients included Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Liz Hurley, Ben Affleck and Kevin Spacey. Peter’s work had expanded over recent years to include counselling clients in practical ways to overcome their personal problems. One Hollywood reporter described an encounter with Peter Crone as ‘like meeting Buddha, Einstein and Austin Powers all at once’.

  Greg suggested that Sian talk to Peter, and after a preliminary chat when Peter visited them in San Diego, she undertook a five-week course of counselling sessions. ‘I met Peter once in his LA office, and from then on everything was on the phone. He works in five- or six-week periods and that’s it. He tells you he’s not a counsellor people see over three years because he deals with the problem.’

  Sian felt that her sessions gave her a better perspective on Greg’s problems. For his part, Peter’s knowledge of Greg as a friend as well as his understanding of the pressures affecting elite athletes allowed him to explore the root causes of their problems. For a start, having known Greg for so long, Peter could see the way his illness had changed him. ‘Obviously the impact of Greg’s health problem was huge. Here is a guy who not only competed in Ironman races but also won, suddenly immobilised and sentenced to the life of a sedentary man. Then, as if that weren’t enough, there is the actual physical pain of v-tach episodes, and worse still, the face-to-face encounter with mortality. That would do anyone’s head in, let alone someone who has been accustomed to being a supreme athlete.’

  Peter passionately believes that life has a miraculous way of revealing imbalances. He saw Greg’s drive as a double-edged sword, powerful but capable of causing damage—physical, mental and emotional. To Peter, Greg’s physical ‘problems’ were the result of his underlying fears. The physical stresses placed on his body by his training and racing were undeniable but he felt that even they were the result of his underlying need to achieve and perform.

  ‘Greg is one of the biggest bundles of love you will ever meet, but he had no self-acceptance, no self-love. He was constantly fearful of his performance, from a kid with his school grades to triathlon and his results. I remember he was writing an article one day for his website about some race. At one point he was explaining how he was out in front, and then put in parentheses that tell-tale, not-good-enough sign— “not that I deserved to be!”’

  ‘To know Greg Welch you have to go beyond what you can see, you have to go beyond his apparent “problem”. There you will discover that despite a less than perfect heart, you will in fact never meet anyone so full of heart. He is a living inspiration for what it means to transcend human limitation, and a living testament to the power of the human spirit that is each of us, looking to break free. If there is only one thing you learn from Greg Welch, it is to recognise in him that who you really are is way bigger than the limitations of your mind and body.’

  Peter saw Greg’s striving as an attempt to challenge his fears. It ultimately reached the point where his body gave out. The extreme levels of training and competition combined with Greg’s internal conflict and centred on his fears. His search for self-validation created a situation where he was literally eating away at himself, both from the inside and outside. ‘His heart condition was simply a reflection of his mental and physical “implosion”. Now, to Western medicine, this may seem “woowoo”…but fear not, they’ll catch up one day!

  ‘There’s only so much pushing we can do before life has its reassuring way of telling us, “Hey, you need to slow down!” It can show up in many ways—a car accident; the breakdown of a relationship; the loss of money or a business; or as is so often the case, as it was for Greg, a disease or some kind of failing of the body. And so reality kicked in with its customary fortitude and Greg had to re-evaluate his life and who he was.’

  For Sian, the central theme of Peter’s advice made sense. ‘He always came back to one point. He said, “Sian, you are you and you cannot change Greg’s behaviour.” I’d never been able to separate Greg and me from the first day Greg and I met. I’ve always been that kind of person. That’s how I dealt with Greg’s sickness. I would give up anything to make him feel better.’

  Sian and Greg began to have long discussions. Sian’s love for Greg allowed her to be up-front with him. ‘I told him I loved him but that I couldn’t keep living like this. I said, “I just see you regressing. I can never imagine my life without you, but I can’t imagine 20 years like this. This isn’t you. I can’t do anything for you and I’m over trying to do it.”

  ‘I was just so straightforward and told him things that really hurt me to say.

  ‘He told me how much he loved me and just said, “You are everything you say. You know me so well and nobody else could ever say that to me. I can’t hide anything from you. I just pulled over the covers.” I don’t think anyone could see those deepest, darkest things about Greg, the person he is. The things I said to him are just the darkest things that were inside of him. It might not have been so bad for someone else. But I always see our life as amazing.’

  Greg found that talking through his problems with Peter Crone helped to crystallise his thoughts and strip away many of his irrational concerns and fears. Peter pointed out the paralysing impact of Greg’s fears: how he was unable to play with Annie and Emma for fear of going into v-tach; how he missed out on their company because he was often left at home alone while they went to the beach with Sian; and how Greg had isolated himself because of his fear.

  ‘His entire identity as a professional sportsman had been reduced to a frail man who was scared to even go for a walk by himself, let alone with a friend or someone who would make him l
augh or feel any emotion that could potentially increase his heart rate and inspire an attack. All in all, Greg was in a very dark hole, and literally confined to his own house, mentally and physically shackled by fear, face to face with a family and a life that were rapidly slipping away from him. It truly was a dark and lonely time.’

  Greg told Peter how just the thought of going for a haircut would reduce him to panic. Greg was afraid that while he was getting his hair cut, he would go into v-tach and end up in an ambulance. Even worse was the idea that this would happen in front of everyone. Peter revealed what he saw as the source of Greg’s fears.

  ‘I showed him that it was in fact more his fear of embarrassment than the fear of the actual v-tach that was causing his anxiety. Basically it was again the result of his underlying fears. I pointed out how his concern was about a future that hadn’t even happened yet!’

  As Greg himself says, ‘I had wanted to one day run across a finish line with my children, but I can’t. I had wanted to exercise with my children. I can’t. I had wanted to do many things with everyone, like drink a beer. I can’t. But I have my family and friends. And I get to be around all the races and that’s what floats my boat. I love it, the energy and passion that we all have in our goals. You know, it doesn’t stop me from doing what I can do, and do it well, but to struggle with goals and motivation is fear. In other words, I found myself in something of a vicious circle: I’d set myself goals but then I’d be frightened that I’d set targets that were unreachable. I eventually realised that was because I didn’t believe in myself fully.’

  Greg began to see that he was creating his fear, that it was adding to his stress and increasing the likelihood of his going into v-tach. Peter saw it as a case of self-fulfilling prophesy. To break the cycle, Peter suggested that Greg take up meditation and work on creating calming breathing patterns to help gain control of his anxieties.