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Cyclist says driver who knocked him off his bike helped save his life

Doctors discovered Kevin McGuire had potentially fatal blocked heart valve after he was admitted to hospital following crash in Sydney NSW

A cyclist in Australia says a driver who knocked him off his bike helped save his life, after doctors treating him in hospital following the crash in Sydney, New South Wales, discovered he had a potentially fatal heart blockage.

Talking on the Channel 9 show A Current Affair, 69-year-old Kevin McGuire revealed that he and the motorist involved in the collision, Doug Cohen, had become firm friends since the crash after finding out they have an awful lot in common.

Cohen – who like McGuire is retired – had put on his brakes as he pulled over to phone an estate agent just as the cyclist was passing his car.

“I thought I was in a science fiction movie, where someone had been picked up by aliens and dropped on the bonnet of the car,” said the driver who – for some reason that remains unexplained – had failed to see the rider.

McGuire, who does a 40km ride every day around the city’s Northern Beaches and who captured the incident on his helmet camera, hit the road surface face-first.

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“I didn't feel too bad,” he said. “I thought I would get back on the bike and finish the ride home.”

But it was when he was being treated for his wounds that doctors broke the news of his heart valve problem to him, necessitating five hours of open heart surgery.

“It’s not letting blood through and they said if they, ‘leave it like that, you will die’,” he said.

“The cardiac team was putting me under for the skin graft, I was more concerned then, looking up saying, ‘this might be the end’,” he said, adding, “If I had to summarise my life, it would be a life of dodging bullets.”

His wife called Cohen afterwards, to thank him.

“She said that I had saved Kevin’s life, that I had saved Kevin’s life because of the accident,” he said.

“It was a close call, so good things can come out of bad situations which is amazing,” he continued.

McGuire rang him back and said, “Doug, sorry to spoil your morning like that.”

As the pair chatted, they realised that they had a lot of common interests.

Cohen said: “I think there is a little bit of a kindred spirit there, because we've both got Jack Russells and both got sports cars and they’re both convertibles and we’ve both had heart surgery," Cohen said.

After his close call, McGuire also has advice for other men.

“There were probably five or six events where I had run out of breath and had to stop and sit on the side of the road for a while,” he said. “I just thought it was a 69-year-old getting old.

“Just enjoy life while you've got it, it's easily snuffed out and you don't get much warning,” he added, urging men of his age to get their health checked out.

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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11 comments

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HoarseMann | 1 year ago
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What a lovely story, but knocking cyclists off bikes is no substitute for preventive medicine / regular health screening checks, even in cyclist hating Australia!

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wtjs replied to HoarseMann | 1 year ago
1 like

 regular health screening checks

Oh dear! The automatic assumption that these are a good idea, when most of them aren't. Some of them are such as bowel cancer screening, cervical cancer screening and (probably) breast cancer screening

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HoarseMann replied to wtjs | 1 year ago
4 likes

I'd take a heart ultrasound check at a healthscreening over being knocked down by an inattentive driver, even if it means I won't make a new friend!

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hawkinspeter replied to wtjs | 1 year ago
2 likes

wtjs wrote:

 regular health screening checks

Oh dear! The automatic assumption that these are a good idea, when most of them aren't. Some of them are such as bowel cancer screening, cervical cancer screening and (probably) breast cancer screening

A lot of people would find it surprising that some cancer screening may not be a good idea, especially if they've had any contact with the severe forms of the diseases. The problem is that screening will also pick up benign or very slow growing growths that could otherwise be safely ignored (e.g. if it would take longer than the person's lifespan to become dangerous) and that puts a lot of people through stress and unnecessary medical procedures.

It's a trade-off between catching and treating the dangerous ones early enough and not performing too many unnecessary surgeries.

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ktache replied to hawkinspeter | 1 year ago
3 likes

But it's the false positives that you get from general screening that causes unnecessary treatment that is the nasty bit, and is a reason for not doing it.

The numbers can get very large very quickly if you start screening everybody.

Stats...

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Cyclo1964 replied to hawkinspeter | 1 year ago
1 like

I cannot comment about Breast or cervical cancer but I can about bowel having spent the last 18 months of my life being treated for stage 3 bowel cancer . The general screening process for bowel cancer normally is a poo test to detect blood whether this is the FIT test or FOBT and generally following a positive it is a follow up with a colonoscopy or sigmoidoscopy whilst uncomfortable and intrusive you still generally come out the way you went in or you might be missing a few polyps. I lived in Australia until aged 49 and screening takes place there age 50 I moved to England where screening starts age 60 I was diagnosed aged 56. Myself personally I would have preferred screening and I think the consensus with most bowel cancer survivors or relatives or those that didn't survive would have also preferred screening. I also understand with screening the take up rate is less than 50 percent but in most data gathered by macmillan and bowel cancer uk states that screening is an extremely useful tool in the fight against cancer. Having gone through major surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, temporary stoma and a reversal I would have been more than happy for someone to stick a camera up my backside at an earlier date if it prevented going what I went through. I suppose you could argue that if screening was a failed process then why do it ?

 

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hawkinspeter replied to Cyclo1964 | 1 year ago
1 like

Cyclo1964 wrote:

I suppose you could argue that if screening was a failed process then why do it ?

It's not that screening is a failed process or even a bad idea (it's generally a good idea), but as ktache says, it's the false positives that are the problem. If you screen a chunk of the population then you're going to get a lot of false positives and you have to weigh up whether it's worth it. The problem really is that once cancer has been detected, it's difficult to know how that cancer is going to progress, so the typical response is to remove it to be on the safe side, especially as patients wouldn't know whether their particular cancer would have ever been a problem or not.

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Mungecrundle replied to Cyclo1964 | 1 year ago
1 like

Just recently did the screening test. My advice - WEAR GLOVES!

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lukei1 | 1 year ago
2 likes

What a HEART warming story rofl

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Mungecrundle replied to lukei1 | 1 year ago
3 likes

Hopefully Road.cc will keep their finger on the pulse and report any similar stories circulating in the same vein.

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SaveTheWail replied to Mungecrundle | 1 year ago
4 likes

Aorta have seen that one coming.

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