Push reset: Life, death and Ryan Campbell

For the first 54 hours, Leontina Heffernan didn't leave the hospital.

Every time she was updated on her husband Ryan Campbell's condition following his cardiac arrest at a children's playground in Cheshire, England, the news was effectively the same.

"I had three different doctors sit me down and say that I needed to prepare myself, because it was likely to be an 'end-of-life event'," she says.

"My first thought was about my kids: How are they going to live without their dad? That was my strongest fear, because they just adore him."

Image Id: 0156DF2F9FD24405AC7C528875DA1190 Image Caption: Campbell with his kids, Jake and Amelie // Getty

The fear cut through several layers. Leontina's experience of a childhood without a father had, as a mother, engendered in her the importance of the relationship between Ryan and their young children, Jake (7) and Amelie (4). If the prospect of losing her husband wasn't already devastating, the idea of her kids losing him as well was simply too much to compute.

"I just couldn't comprehend it," she adds. "It was: My god – what am I going to do?"

Over the ensuing days, amid aborted attempts to remove Campbell from sedation, and as the prospect of a heart transplant became real, it was a train of thought that never left her mind.

Then, on Saturday, April 23, Leontina walked into the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at Royal Stoke University Hospital in England's West Midlands to resume what had become a week-long bedside vigil.

Only this time, Campbell was sitting up.

"What she went through is something that, as a husband, you never want your wife to go through," says Campbell, who was Netherlands head coach at the time but is currently on temporary leave. "I can't even start to imagine how bad it was."

* * *

Simon Millington can't shake the scene. One of Campbell's closest friends, Millington had flown in to the UK from his adopted home city of Nevada to lend any kind of support he could to Leontina, who had broken the news to him on the Saturday night. 

In turn, he had gotten in touch with Rob Baker – best man at the Campbells' wedding – in Perth, and Charlie Burke, another old friend through the Hong Kong connection, where Ryan had met both Millington and Leontina.

Four continents, three phone calls, one earth-shattering piece of news.

Millington arrived at the hospital on the Monday night, just over two days after Campbell's cardiac arrest. While he was up to speed with his friend's situation, the actual sight of him in a hospital bed, a tangle of tubes and cords spooling in and out of him, monitors and machines beeping and whirring, brought home the stark reality. So too did Leontina's reaction upon seeing him.

"I went into ICU and 'LT' (Leontina) just broke down," he says. "The view was just unbelievable. I mean, to see 'Cambo', normally so fit and healthy, just lying there with 'spaghetti junction' coming out of his neck, it was just awful.

"His chest was so uneven with his breathing, and he just looked so sick and, just, lifeless."

Image Id: 6117055691534C7DA6E6E76C899702A6 Image Caption: Campbell enjoyed a decorated career with WA // Getty

Leontina arranged for Millington to be granted ICU access as an approved visitor, and then for the first time in two-and-a-bit days, she left the hospital.

"I took her back to her brother's house, and then I came back," Millington says. "The specialist came around in the evening to talk to me, and then at one point (Campbell) had a 'red-light moment' and I had to leave the room.

"It was all strange. I just sat with him until about 2am. Promised him all sorts of things, trying to wake him up out of his coma."

The promises harked back to their days together in Hong Kong, where Millington was the Chairman of Hong Kong Cricket, and where Campbell had taken on the role of head coach at Kowloon Cricket Club after finding himself rudderless in his post-playing years. 

From the outset, the former WA 'keeper-batter, who played two ODIs for Australia in 2002, had loved the sea change. What had initially been planned as a yearlong adventure turned into two, and the extensions continued. Campbell became a committed and valued addition to the Associate Cricket scene, where funds were finite and a willingness to pitch in with matters beyond the boundary trumped a textbook cover drive every time.

In May 2013, through his former WA teammate Chris Rogers, he met Leontina, a Hong Kong born Englishwoman with Dutch heritage, at a bar called COAST in the Soho district of Hong Kong.

"Well I thought he was a complete douchebag at first," Leontina laughs, "because my friend had been telling me about this guy she'd met who was a cricket coach, so when he introduced himself saying, 'I'm the coach of the KCC (Kowloon Cricket Club)', I thought that was him.

"So when he proceeded to try and impress me by buying myself and my friends a round of White Russians, I told him I was lactose intolerant, which I'm not.

"It wasn't a great start, but it was all a case of mistaken identity. He came back from that pretty strong."

Image Id: 34EE54533B2F49FDB767E0F167D7A28B Image Caption: Ryan and Leontina first met in May 2013 // supplied

Leontina came to admire the passion Campbell showed for the coaching craft. A studier and lover of languages, she had the same enthusiasm for her own profession, which had taken her to China originally, to study Mandarin.

The pair grew close, and married in June 2016, a year after their son Jake was born. And while they didn't know it at the time, when Ryan accepted the Netherlands coaching post in January 2017, their family was about to grow again.

"Part of the reason we actually accepted the job in the Netherlands was to enjoy Europe with Jake," Campbell says. "We decided that when we were coming to Europe, we were going to go to Paris, we were going to go to Italy and enjoy the food and the drinks.

"Well, that all got curtailed because 'LT' fell pregnant after about six weeks. So that kind of curbed us for a little while, because as any good woman would say, 'Why would I go to Italy if I can't drink the wine?'"

The upside though for the family was not only Campbell's new position, which had marked him as one to watch in the world of cricket coaching, but the location in which they had landed – just 30 minutes west of Amsterdam, and 15 minutes east of the beaches of Zandvoort and Bloemendaal. Though self-described "beach snob" Campbell saw the strips of sand as falling well short of the standard set by those in his home state, the coastal vibe spoke to the outdoorsy lifestyle the couple wanted their family to enjoy.

Image Id: C3719384063246FF9895E3E1F4A24C47 Image Caption: The Campbells rugged up on the Netherlands' coastline, close to home // supplied

"We had some Dutch friends in Hong Kong, and we said, 'Look, where should we go?'" says Leontina, who had never lived in the Netherlands despite her mother being from there.

"Someone said, 'Oh, go to Haarlem'. It's such an amazing place to live. It's beautiful … it's so close to Amsterdam, yet it's clean, and it's so safe for the kids; the freedom they have here is incredible.

"I love the way that the Dutch bring up their kids, and Haarlem really allows (them to have) that freedom and responsibility."

That fondness for 'the Dutch way' was put to the test just recently, when Jake returned to school after the family came home from the UK following Campbell's medical trauma.

"He was six at the time," Leontina says, "and the teacher asked him, 'Would you like to stand up and tell the class what happened?'

"And for us, we were – My god, what? – because we come from a different culture. But even from an early age, the Dutch are very much about speaking about things – get in a circle, put your hand up, talk about things.

"And so Jake just stood in front of the class and told them what happened, and he apparently did it incredibly well."

* * *

As the days wore on in the ICU, Millington's role revealed itself organically.

"He was just the perfect person to have come into that situation," Leontina says. "You've got every confidence in him. He's a smart guy, and I just felt safe, which is strange, because I was in probably the most unsafe situation of my life, in terms of all the other things you're thinking about, like, Ryan's the breadwinner, all of these things.

"But in that moment, he provided security and safety for me, just being by my side."

Millington made it his mission to add some levity to an otherwise bleak setting. He poked fun at Ryan's unusually long second toes, complained about having been forced to relocate from Las Vegas to Stoke, and told his mate he'd have a cold Little Creatures beer (made by a Fremantle-based brewing company) waiting for him when he decided to wake up.

"I don't want it to sound flippant at all, but he was able to bring light humour into that situation, without letting any of us feel guilty for it, which is incredible," Leontina adds. "And it was exactly what I needed. Just a moment of humour."

She divided her world into two parts. At the hospital, she was sitting with Ryan, digesting information on the run to see if she could help the situation. For example, when it became clear the doctors were anxious to know what Ryan's 'down time' had been – the period from his initial collapse to his revival – she plucked up the courage to get on the phone to Beci Bassett, the good Samaritan who had performed CPR that day and, in doing so, saved Ryan's life.

"At the scene, after Ryan was taken to hospital, I asked her to put her number in my phone," she says. "Whichever way it was going to go, I felt I was going to be wanting to talk to her.

"I couldn't have told them if it was one hour or one minute (of down time), because I was so messed up, but she said from beginning to end, it was three minutes.

"The doctors still couldn't say anything (definitive), but they said from a brain point of view, that was a very good sign."

Image Id: A9EE76EC667B4AA884BBEDE3FC54DE36 Image Caption: Campbell in his element – at training with the Netherlands squad // supplied

Leontina was also forced to get in touch with family and friends to correct media reports on Ryan's condition. Despite their best attempts to manage the release of information, assumptions were made and facts somehow made way for falsehoods.

"It was incorrectly reported that he was out of his coma and there was no brain damage, when none of that was certain at all," she recalls.

"That was really distracting and difficult for me. Whilst the media was reporting that he was out of a coma, I was at the same time having conversations with the cardiologist about, 'Well, if we can't bring him out of the coma, what do we do then?'

"I have family in New Zealand, and so they were reading the Australian news, and I was getting messages saying, 'I'm so glad he's on the mend', whilst I'm still having these conversations.

"I just didn't need it. I was angry. I just wanted to hunker down with my family. It felt like I was having to fight another battle, which I really didn't have the energy to fight."

Because she needed to pour what was left of her into Jake and Amelie. That was the other half of Leontina's divided world.

"I had to wake up and go, 'Right, when I'm with my kids, I'm with my kids, and we're happy and we're smiley," she says.

"When I go to the hospital with Simon, that's a different thing."

* * *

There was a moment midway through their harrowing week when a specialist came to speak with Leontina and Millington.

"He was this Welsh guy – very forthright," Millington says. "He said, 'We're going to do this, and we'll do that, and if that works, f---ing brilliant. If not, we're going to try him on this medicine, and if that works, equally as f---ing brilliant'.

"So we're kind of laughing and feeling, This is going to be OK. And then he went, 'But I have to tell you, I've made a reservation for him to be transferred to Birmingham, to the transplant centre'.

"LT was obviously beside herself."

A heart transplant, they were told, carried with it a life expectancy of 10 years – not enough for Campbell to see either of his kids into adulthood.

The grim outlook continued as they watched for any signs of life. Millington at one point opened Campbell's eyelids and shone a torch in, hoping to detect something from his old mate.

"They were just nothing – just absolutely nothing there," he says. "That was the worst thing I can remember."

Image Id: 6DF038AF066F40FF8F7839C07894B605 Image Caption: Simon Millington spent much of the week by his good mate Campbell's bedside // supplied

On a couple of occasions, medical staff had considered removing Campbell from sedation, only to back out when the process wasn't progressing as smoothly as they'd hoped. One of those times had been on the Monday when, after being too slow to respond to stimuli and with a worryingly irregular heartbeat, they reverted to full sedation.

"I was sitting by his bed, and I remember, it was 11:25am," Leontina says of that day. "And then the next thing I knew it was seven hours later, and the doctor came in and said, 'Any movement?'

"The nurse said, 'No', and I could just see his face, thinking, Oh God."

As well as the limited life expectancy, there was further cause for concern regarding a potential heart transplant.

"The other thing the specialist said about the heart transplant," recalls Millington, "he said, 'There's every chance he will have some short-term memory loss. That should go away in a couple of months. But if it doesn't, then he'll need 24/7 care'."

It was a grim outlook made worse by Campbell's lack of response to that initial period off sedation, which was followed that evening by another arrhythmia. On the Tuesday however, after three days without cause for optimism but now less heavily sedated, a breakthrough arrived: Campbell nodded when Leontina asked if he could hear her.

"That moment," she says, "was the first hopeful thing we'd had happen."

Little by little, the positivity increased. After a couple of days through which Campbell was relatively stable, they again planned to take him off the sedation, though again, they ultimately opted to wait another day.

On the Friday, when Campbell's heart responded well to the removal of a temporary pacemaker, they began the process of easing him off the sedation.

And so we come full circle. On Saturday, April 23, Leontina walked into the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at Royal Stoke University Hospital in England's West Midlands to resume what had become a week-long bedside vigil.

Only this time, Ryan was sitting up.

"Walking into the room, and not expecting it, but seeing him sitting up, was just incredible," she says. "Eyes open, trying to talk … it was incredible."

* * *

That Saturday in Stoke marked more of a beginning than an end for Campbell and his family.

In every way, his recovery has been excellent. He bears a scar on the left side of his chest, where there is also a rectangular outline on his skin about the size of two matchboxes where doctors inserted a defibrillator. While there is nothing wrong with his heart, the cardiologist decided to employ this "insurance policy" (the same used by Danish footballer Christian Eriksen) given they were unable to determine a cause for the cardiac arrest. He has happily accepted the medical advice of 'everything in moderation', be it a beer or two in the afternoon or an easy morning bike ride around Haarlem with his family.

He can still detail the vivid dream he was having as he was emerging from the induced coma, which were an aspect of the delirium he experienced upon his return to this world – a common post-coma symptom of ICU patients. He remembers looking at the puncture marks on his arms from the injections he had required, and conflating that with his dream of being abducted, robbed and drugged with heroin in Bali.

"It was such a clear dream," he says. "I couldn't ring anyone. They'd taken my wallet, my watch, my passport … and then to tell your wife that you need an AIDS test … yeah, it was the weirdest thing I've ever experienced."

As had been the case throughout, Leontina was there beside him, this time to reassure, and later remind her husband that he was safe, and everything was going to be OK.

"He was very confused," Leontina says. "Very concerned, but not panicky, not so much. Actually, he was very much like his elderly father – very calm, very softly spoken.

"But you could tell by his words (he was concerned): 'LT, you've got to find my wallet, they've taken my wallet. You've got to cancel my cards. They've stolen my wedding ring'.

"Because of the delirium, you have to repeat it, because they don't remember it. So you go through the same conversation for a couple of days.

"But he was so fast in getting over that; the doctors told us it could go on for months.

"Like with everything, Ryan came out of that phase very quickly and very effectively as well, so it was a relatively short-lived period to go through, thankfully."

Campbell has obligingly acquiesced to interview requests from all over the cricketing world, and while he is willing to continue to talk about it, he has also reached a point where he is preferring to look at his present, and his immediate future.

"I've been in what they call a reintegration program to get me back into work," he says. "And that will continue until everyone says, 'Yep, you're 100 per cent, let's go.

"When that is, I'm not sure, but the day is coming closer, hopefully, because I'm starting to drive everyone nuts in my house.

"After all the thinking and reflecting, I just want to get on with it. And if that's a new adventure, if that's here (in the Netherlands), whatever, the time is coming that I need to get back into the real world.

"I will always remember what happened. I'll always be campaigning for more AEDs (automated external defibrillators), but I want to now put it behind me.

"I'm at that point where it's like, You know what? Enough. I'm ready to go now."

None of which is to say he isn't viewing the world – and his world within it – a little differently. 

"Not too many people get a chance to reset their lives," he says. "And on April 16, when I died and came back, that week, and now ever since, you kind of go, 'You know what, did I get the balance quite right?'

"Maybe now's a good time to reset and change a few priorities, (and) that's hopefully what I'm trying to do."

To the same point, what crystallised for both Ryan and Leontina through their experience was the importance of their children – their safety, and their happiness – and the family unit, and prioritising that above all else. They both know that as the routines and requirements of their daily lives resume, that simple calculus will become more complex, but they are viewing matters now through that narrower lens. 

"We just really focus on the four of us now," Leontina says. "Of course, we take (extended) family into account – your family is your family, and always will be – but at the end of the day, after this, you really have to do what's right for your kids and for yourselves.

"In terms of work, yes, you've got to do a good job, you've still got commitments and bills to pay and you've got to keep doing all of those things.

"But what is most important? Again, it comes down to family.

"So I suppose it's hard to say in practice, what you do – it could be small things, it could be big things – but it's always got to be what's best for your family. That's how we see everything now."

* * *

A couple of weeks ago, a little more than three months on from his cardiac arrest, Campbell and Leontina took the kids for a day out to ARTIS Zoo in Amsterdam.

They rode their bikes to the train station, then caught the train and a tram, had lunch and enjoyed each other's company. It was their first real family outing since that life-altering day in Cheshire, and it carried with it a few reminders, notably the same bright blue sky that had greeted them on April 16, the same family backpack being carried around, and the same black denim shorts being worn by Campbell.

"Thankfully he didn't have his red hoodie on," Leontina smiles. "I've basically told him he's not allowed to wear another one ever again; that's the thing that just sticks in my mind from that day – that red hoodie."

There was a moment through the day when, in a crowded space, Campbell briefly fell out of Amelie's view.

"She lost sight of Ryan," Leontina says, "and you could see that it disturbed her."

Amelie had been right there when Campbell had collapsed. She witnessed the events that unfolded thereafter, until he was airlifted to hospital. As a "just in case" measure, Leontina and Ryan have since put her through a course of therapy.

"We just wanted to make sure, and the psychologist said she's processed it extremely well," Leontina says. "She said the way we as a family dealt with it, the way we talked to the children and the way everything was explained to them, she feels contributed to what she can see as a positive outcome.

"That's thanks to my family, and Simon, and the support that they gave."

The zoo trip was the first of what will be many more family outings, though rather than feeling a sudden urge to tick of a series of bucket-list activities, Leontina is mostly just relishing the idea of finding enjoyment in the unexceptional.

"I don't think it's necessarily about the adventures," she says. "We've always tried to make sure we have fun with the kids. For Ryan's 50th (last February) we went to Norway – went dog sledding and all kinds of fun things with the kids.

"So we've always had that, but I think it's more about really just putting family first, putting the kids first and recognising that (family time) is so precious.

Image Id: DEF2279DE7894153A8B5266227838791 Image Caption: A family trip to Norway in February for Ryan's 50th // Getty

"It's not necessarily about, 'OK, let's pack our lives full of these cool things'. It's more about nurturing them, and making sure they're feeling safe – that for me is the most important … that the kids are growing up with a very healthy sense of self, and a very healthy sense of family.

"(Ryan's cardiac arrest) could have gone a horrible way. It was disturbing enough for the kids, but imagine if he hadn't come back, and how that would have affected them for their entire lives.

"So it's about being happy together. It's about fun times – even if you're doing something mundane, as much as the adventures – and it's about feeling safe and secure."

Campbell reiterates his wife's sharpened focus on family, and adds to it another central aspect of his life: his passion for cricket. Along his winding road, he knows, amid selection dilemmas and KPIs and qualifications, a pure sense of enjoyment is easily diluted.

"I love this game," he says. "That's something that sometimes you need to wake up to, because everything can be hard work, or this is not happening, or we're losing, or whatever.

"But this has made it very clear to me: I love the game. I'm not saying I'm going to be a coach 'til I'm bloody 75 or whatever – it could be another avenue (of cricket that he works in) – but I love it, I want to be involved in it, and I love what it represents."

Image Id: 3BBBA2061D7A44478A5C17DA53F65F8D Image Caption: (Left) The Campbells enjoying the Haarlem snow, and (R) a family snap from April 2020 // supplied

With a T20 World Cup in his native land on the horizon, it is not difficult for him to continue looking forward. His doctors are optimistic about permitting him to fly when the time comes, and that in turn has instilled him with the belief it will happen. It would be fitting too, that after all this time, his journey would bring him home, at least for a short time.

"We all look back from time to time, and we could all think (things like), Should I have stayed in Perth? Should I have done this?" he says.

"But the facts are, I've loved everything I've done. I took a job in Hong Kong, which I honestly thought I would do for a year. But I fell in love with the place, I fell in love with my wife, and we had a kid there, which I thought I'd never do at 40 years of age.

"And I got to discover a whole different side of cricket. And I loved it, from the moment I left the country. There's always been that thought that I'll come back – next year, or the year after – but then all of a sudden, we're in the Netherlands, and now I have two Dutch-speaking kids, who love being here, and my wife enjoys it as well.

"Who knows what our next challenge will be? Will I come back to Australia? Maybe. England? Maybe. But the thing is, I've done what I've done, and it's given me a magnificent view of the game. It's given me opportunities to see the world, and my kids, they have a Dutch passport, they can come to Australia if they want, they can live in Europe, they can do whatever they want to do.

"And that's what the game has given me. So I encourage everyone not to just pigeon-hole yourself and stay in what you're doing. If you have an idea or a dream to follow, you've just got to have a crack at it.

"It's always been my goal to be part of the team that goes to the World Cup in Australia. I'm very proud of what I've done here in the Netherlands, and to show us off in Australia, and I'm at that point now where I'm ready to go.

"Whatever comes after that, well, we'll see what happens."