Jamie Mackay: Resilience, Recovery and Knowing Your Numbers

I reckon I’ve nearly died three times, although the most recent occasion could possibly involve a touch of hyperbole. But the first two were dinkum near-death experiences!

The first such occurrence was when I was four years old and our Southland farming family was having a rare holiday in the Riviera of the South, Riverton. I say rare because my Dad was not big on holidays. He much preferred we stayed at home and crutched lambs or made hay over the Christmas period. That’s why he always mowed hay on Xmas or New Year’s Eve.

Ultimately, he saved the Xmas holiday dilemma by buying us a Para Pool which he reckoned negated the need to holiday anywhere other than home! To be fair we spent countless summers splashing around in the 24 feet (that’s less than 8 metres) diameter pool. Dad reckoned it was a handy source of water to fight fires should our house ever be set alight. Plus, it doubled as a great source of water to run our spray sheep dip in the autumn when the swimming season had ended.

But back to Riverton. We’d obviously rented a holiday home just across the road from the main beach. Mum was home alone preparing our evening meal (it was the 1960s!) by the kitchen window overlooking the beach, while the rest of the family returned from our sandy sojourn.

For some reason, best only known to my four-year-old self, I decided to race the family home and ran out in front of a startled oncoming car. Mum later said her life flashed before her eyes as she helplessly watched her third child’s dice with death. Apparently the rapidly braking car just clipped me and knocked me off my feet, but at that age kids bounce. I did. And I escaped my first brush with death! I was lucky.

The next near-death experience hit me when I was 18. I was taking a gap year after secondary schooling to play senior rugby and learn my craft as a musterer and shearer, before heading to Otago University to study commerce and become an accountant. I’d had a reasonably successful schoolboy rugby career and, in hindsight, perhaps foolishly, thought I was going to be the next big thing!

To cut a long story short, I headed off to Ashburton to play in a South Island Marist tournament. I was a boy amongst men. A freak tackle saw me stretchered off the paddock and into an ambulance, courtesy of a kidney split clean in two. The sort of injury that’s usually the domain of car accidents or high impact collisions.

I was gravely ill. Certainly, ill enough, in the eyes of my parents, to get a bedside blessing from a Catholic Priest as I was about to head into theatre to save me and my kidney.

Nearly three months later, after an extended stay and further surgery in Dunedin hospital, I made it home. I can truly say it was a life-changing experience. Tough but humbling. I spent most of my time in Dunedin’s Urology ward, surrounded by elderly men with prostate or urinary issues. I experienced death up close for the first time, as one of my stablemates passed away in the middle of the night. It was a very frightening time in my life, but ultimately, it made me realise how lucky I was.

My third and final near-death experience (well it certainly felt like it) was a month or so ago when I got completely bowled over by Influenza A. Having had about three sick days in the last 30 years in radio, once again I felt pretty bullet proof. Indeed, I had rather patronisingly mocked co-workers and underlings for pulling sickies.

I’m not sure how I got it. It could have been courtesy of Air New Zealand, the glitzy Auckland party for Newstalk ZB’s 100^th birthday bash, or from attending a crowded open day for the city’s new underground City Rail Link on the eve of it’s opening.

Regardless of where I got it from, I got it good. Literally bedridden for three weeks, I constantly battled fever, coughing phlegm fits, and interminable sweats. One night I awoke gasping for breath and thought “is this how it ends?”

And then when it didn’t, we pondered going to hospital and getting on a respirator. But then I thought I may as well be at home, rather than waiting in an overcrowded corridor with a whole lot of other sick people.

I was lucky. I got over it. More than 500 Kiwis didn’t. Influenza is literally a killer for the elderly and those with respiratory illnesses. The A strain this flu season is particularly brutal.

My third real brush with a health skirmish, out of a total of 66 years, isn’t too bad really. But it certainly was a timely reminder of my mortality and how lucky I am. A recurring theme, I guess, within this column.

As I write, from my air-conditioned Dunedin office, I look out my window and think, yet again, how lucky am I?

A Southland sheep farmer, in a past life, I dread to think how I would’ve handled lambing in one of the worst Septembers ever. Not very well is the answer. Even with youth on my side. I think of some of my old farming and footy mates who are still doing a lambing beat and I have nothing but admiration for them. Farmers are nothing if not resilient, but this spring down south will have tested the best of them.

So, where’s the good news in all this gloom? Let me tell you where.  Any lamb tough enough to survive September down south will be worth $200 or more. I’m showing my age here but the last horrific lambing I went through was in 1987, where it rained incessantly for three weeks straight. In those days we were lucky to get $15-20/head.

Returns are good. And good times, are a good time, to stress test a business.

My recent bout of Severe Man Flu was an exercise in learning a bit of resilience, and a timely reminder of the need for a good health system and regular check-ups.

There’s a parallel with business, where the best decisions are made when we have good information. Just as a doctor relies on tests and data to understand a person’s health, advisers rely on budgets, benchmarking, and financial information to understand the health of a business and provide the right advice.

The businesses that tend to perform best over the long term aren’t always the biggest or the busiest. More often than not, they’re the ones that know their numbers, understand their financial position and make decisions early. Good times are a great opportunity to stress test a business, challenge assumptions and prepare for whatever comes next. That’s where good advice and the + MORE team can make all the difference.

Now if only Mother Nature and Trump would play ball.