Brian looks back on an open life
Brian Wharton did not give a second thought to his pending operation when he was aged 14. He didn’t know that he would be the fifth person in Australia to have open-heart surgery. He didn’t know that only two of the previous four people had survived after the operation.
“I was only a kid. All I knew was that I was going to have an operation and that all would be well,” Brian said.
The year was 1959 and Dr Kenneth Morris, the man who had conducted Australia’s first open-heart surgery two years earlier, was in charge at The Alfred. Brian recalls Dr Morris as “a big man with big hands, I always wondered how he would ever do it”.
Brian grew up in Carlsruhe, a town halfway between Woodend and Kyneton near Bendigo, on a 10-acre farm which was originally an orchard. His father was a bricklayer and Brian’s two older brothers were also in that trade: “I had a go for 12 months but I wasn’t good enough to keep up with it. We didn’t know at that the stage the problem I had with my ticker”.
After his dad died in 1958 and the family moved to Kyneton, Brian finished Fourth Form (the equivalent of Year 10) and had applied for a job with the Postmaster-General’s Department (PMG). PMG was responsible for providing postal and telegraphic services throughout Australia, later to be replaced by what would become Telstra and Australia Post.
It was only towards the end of his application that he had a medical examination, when a specialist in Albert Park confirmed to Brian’s mother that he had a hole in his heart.
Brian had few indications growing up that something was wrong, remembering that he “could never run at school – I used to run out of breath”.
An intended three-week stay at The Alfred turned into three months.
“I died about seven times,” Brian said. “I was hooked up to a machine where if your heart stopped for a quarter of a minute, it set off alarms. A switch would be pushed and it would shake me back into gear.”
Brian had almost nothing but positives to talk about his care at The Alfred, describing the doctors and nurses as “marvellous”. But the food did not get as good a wrap – “it was terrible”.
“My mother used to come down once a week from Kyneton,” he said. “She would bring a chook and I’d hop into that because that would be about all I would eat for the week.
“You would get these two rissoles on a plate and the smell was terrible. Because it was a single-level building you could open the window and throw them (the food) into the garden. I’m sure that’s not the case with the food now.”
Attending a health rehabilitation centre in Mornington, Brian followed up his interest in radio and television and to complete a radio tradesman course at RMIT. He then worked in Kyneton before taking over his own shop which sold electrical goods in St Arnaud by age 28, where he still lives today.
But Brian’s experiences with The Alfred weren’t yet over. When he was about 32, he “started carking it”, as his heart would beat extremely fast. Taken to The Alfred, “they told me my heart rate was down to about 25 a minute, which was why I was going head over turkey”.
Fitted with a pacemaker – “quite a bulky thing” – the first one lasted more than 17 years and he has been getting new ones about every decade since.
“I wouldn’t be 77 if it wasn’t for The Alfred,” Brian said. “I’ve lived a full life, worked a full life. The ticker seems to keep going.
“I believe The Alfred leads the way in research and help. I am sure The Alfred is highly thought of in all our communities. The Alfred helped me many years ago and that is the reason I support it now.”
Brian has been married to his wife Glenis for 55 years and has two children, seven grandchildren and six great grandchildren.
