"There's just so much kindness out there"
John Callan suffered a cardiac arrest at North Camp station near Guildford two years ago
A man says he is forever grateful to the bystander and the ambulance service who saved his life following a heart attack near Guildford.
John Callan suffered a heart attack at North Camp Station two years ago, before being saved by a bystander named Toby, and a South East Coast Ambulance Service crew
John walked us through what he remembers from the day:
"I had a twinge earlier that morning in my in my chest and put it down to the pulled muscle or something. I wasn't concerned and set off to North Camp station to catch the train to Guildford.
I remember driving to the station. I remember parking my car that was on the 27th of October and the next thing I remember, is waking up on the 4th of November in intensive care at Frimley Park Hospital"
"One of the luckiest people alive"
What had happened is John had suffered a cardiac arrest on a bench at the station and collapsed on the platform. A bystander called Toby, who was the only other person at the station, saw him go down and instantly called 999.
Toby was then walked through the procedure of CPR over the phone and supported John until the ambulance crew arrived to support John with a defibrillator.
John emphasised the fact that he felt like 'one of the luckiest people alive'.
"I think I'm one of the luckiest people alive here. I have to be. Toby doesn't usually take that train. I would have been on my own on the station platform.
He did CPR on me until the ambulance arrived. Which I think was about 6 minutes. Again, I was lucky the ambulance was just up the the road
8 shocks later they had my heart beating with a normal rhythm and me breathing again. So that was half an hour that I was down, quite incredible."
"It's getting people over being scared"
John told us about how it was so important that people not only knew what to do in these situations, but were also not scared to do it.
"Critical, absolutely critical. I think actually more people than you realise know what to do. I think it's getting people over being scared, it takes a hell of a lot of pressure to push somebody's sternum down two inches
It's about knowing that that anything's better than nothing and you know, just shout for help.
Every second matters. It really does. And given that somebody's heart is just quivering instead of beating, you can't do any damage. You can only help. No survivor of a cardiac arrest ever complained about a couple of broken ribs."
John also emphasised how easy it was to learn what to do
"Take 10 minutes, 15 at the most and just look up on the Internet, watch a video, it really is that simple.
Be able to make a difference, not just to the person that's had the cardiac arrest, but to everybody else that's impacted by that person."
"I have on occasion just stopped and burst into tears"
Since John got out of hospital, he says that he has been able to view life in an entirely different way.
He has since celebrated his ruby anniversary with his wife, and watched his son get married, events that he says were all the sweeter following what happened.
"We laughed about it now. But our son couldn't get through his speech. His wife had to stand up and take it from him
It's just a privilege to be alive and I'm so grateful to so many people
I can tell you, during the summer particularly, I'd go out for a ride on my bike. You can be out there on a summer's day with the blue skies, the birds are singing, middle of nowhere. And that's when it will hit me how lucky I am, and actually how lucky we we all are.
It's at that point I have on occasion stopped and got off my bike and burst into tears because you just start to remember the whole chain. There's just so much kindness out there."