The 60-year-old and his doctors say if it was not for their knowledge of CPR, or cardiopulmonary resuscitation, he may not be alive today.
Sitting in his hospital bed, Peter McKay is still taking in what happened to him.
"It’s unbelievable, I shouldn’t be here now," he said. "I was dead."
And if it wasn't for his family’s quick actions, he probably would be dead.
The 60-year-old grandfather was getting ready for a wedding when he began to feel dizzy and had some tightness in his chest area, but the symptoms were vague.
His daughter and a practising nurse, Lauren Muir, was home at the time and came to his aid.
"I said: 'what do you mean you don't feel right?' And I'm looking at him and I said: 'because you look all right to me at the moment'."
Though appearances may have deceived her, Lauren had a gut feeling her father may have been suffering a heart attack, so called 000.
Three minutes later, Peter had collapsed.
His son, Michael McKay, had just returned from work and found his father.
"And I just yelled out: 'Lauren, he’s not breathing. We need to start CPR'," Michael recalled.
Michael has undertaken first aid and CPR training for the past six years.
Both he and his sister took turns in giving their father compression and holding his mouth open to encourage air flow.
"Michael was just going for it," said Lauren.
"And I remember saying, 'where are you up to? What number are you up to?' And then supporting Dad's head."
Beside herself, their mother Yvonne was outside anxiously awaiting the ambulance.
She said running through her mind was a constant refrain: "this is not supposed to be happening, it’s just not your time to go."
"I was willing him and wishing him to breathe."
Lauren and Michael performed CPR on their father for 15 minutes until paramedics arrived.
The wait was agonising.
"I don't even know if he could hear me or anything, but I just know that I had to tell him to just keep breathing. Stopping just doesn't even come into your mind," Michael said.
'Absolutely they saved his life'
Their father was on the brink of death, unresponsive to defibrillator shocks and clinically dead for 30 minutes before they were able to re-establish a rhythm.
One in six people die from the complications associated with a heart attack, but Monash Hospital cardiologist Dr Betty Ho says it was the CPR that saved Peter Mackay's life.
"The danger period is that first hour, so Peter would have been one of those statistics if not for the fast action of his family," said Dr Ho.
"Basically you get a lack of circulation to the body, to the brain, to the heart and the patient generally dies after about four minutes. Absolutely they saved his life."
He was diagnosed with a significant narrowing of the main artery and surgeons used a stent to release the blood flow.
But aside from cracked ribs due to the CPR, he has no other damage and an excellent prognosis.
The Heart Foundation says around 55,000 Australians suffer a heart attack every year.
That’s about one every nine minutes.
CPR can triple chances of survival: St John Ambulance
St John Ambulance's development manager, Martin Wells, said only about five per cent of Australians were trained in the past five years.
"This is a major problem when we look at cardiac arrest and cardiac illness being our largest killer," he said.
"In an emergency when someone's not responding and not breathing, early intervention with CPR can triple the chances of survival."
Peter McKay said he hopes other can learn from his family’s experience.
As to his own experience being clinically dead for 30 minutes, Peter said he is thankful he survived.
"Well it wasn’t as good as what I’ve got here obviously, otherwise I wouldn’t have come back."
