It wasn't anything like I expected it to be. I was walking down Westland Row to the train, after presiding at a lecture in Trinity and having taken the visiting lecturer for a drink in the Pavilion. It was early January and about 11 p.m. at night and I was actually walking rather fast, aiming to catch the second-last train back to Howth. The street, I recall, was more or less deserted. Suddenly, about half way to the station, I was struck by what seemed to me to be a ferocious dose of heartburn. It ran all up and down my windpipe and settled somewhere at the back of my throat. Stopped abruptly in my tracks, I cursed the pint of ale I had drunk.
After resting for a while against some railings, I managed to creep on the rest of the way and got myself on to the train. The pain eased somewhat during the half-hour journey to Howth and, having got there, I managed to creep to my car and drive myself up the hill.
Once in my bedroom, though, it became clear that this pain was not going to go away. As I lay rolling about on the floor and groaning, my wife phoned the emergency services and was told - wisely, as it turned out - to get me into the car and drive me to Beaumont Hospital herself, rather than waiting for an ambulance, which might take some time. At Beaumont, a young doctor lost no time in injecting me with something. I was by this time barely conscious, but still babbling about suffering from indigestion. I remember him looking down at me humorously, needle in hand, and saying: "Now you don't really believe that, do you?" That quietened me.
Once I had had my injection, I was really in a fairly beatific state. The pain had receded (though apparently the period of danger lasted till the next morning), and I remember no longer caring much what happened to me. If I died, that was perfectly all right with me. It was not that I was in great pain, or anything. It was just that I was tired, enormously tired. My whole past life did not pass before my eyes. I just remember contemplating my end with surprising equanimity - and something of that feeling, I am glad to say, stays with me still. I hope that I will be able to hold that thought when I need it.
For the next six weeks, I was an inmate of the cardiac unit at Beaumont before being transferred to Blackrock clinic for a bypass. There are still only two places in the Republic where bypasses can be carried out, the Blackrock Clinic and the Mater Private Hospital and I belong to an organisation which is raising money for a third such centre. I was fortunate not to have to go on a waiting list.
After the operation I experienced, like other heart surgery patients, curious hallucinations. Jesus Christ appeared to me - but he was, somehow dressed up as Bugs Bunny. He capered about wildly, and made a variety of silly noises. I got the feeling that the Second Coming, if it occurs, will be a pretty zany affair.
After the bypass, you must be up and walking within a few days in order to prevent a build-up of fluid on the lungs. After a week I was sent home to recuperate and 10 weeks after that, I was fortunate to begin a rehabilitation programme at Beaumont Hospital. The programme developed by Dr John Horgan constitutes a model for the whole nation.
For an hour three times a week, we performed a carefully planned sequence of exercises on various machines. There were also weekly sessions with the dietician and the psychologist - who gave useful talks on recognition of stress and the avoidance of depression.
I had thought that my life was not particularly stressed, but I now realise the degree to which in fact I had been stressed. The tell-tale sign is that one feels one is indispensable - but watch out! No one is indispensable. I have returned to work, and an essential part of my routine is my daily, brisk walk of no less than 40 minutes. It has become the most important feature of my day, to which anything which arises in the office must take second place. I hope I have learned from this whole experience, three years on, that no aspect of one's job or profession is worth killing oneself for.
In conversation with Kathryn Holmquist
Prof Dillon has recently edited Letters from Germany (to be published mid-November by Four Courts Press) based on correspondence in 1922-25 between his grandfather, John Dillon, last leader of the Irish Party, and his father Myles Dillon, a Celtic scholar based in Germany during the Civil War.
Subscriptions towards a third heart surgery centre for the Republic may be sent to the Cardiac Surgical Foundation, 114 Pembroke Road, Dublin 4.
