IT was a typical busy day on his Point Turton farm when John Taheny had a stroke.
John, along with his son Tom and brother Paul had been refilling the airseeder and inspecting crop emergence.
"I went down the hill from where the truck was and Tom came down and met me there," John said.
"He asked me if I had something in my mouth and I thought 'not bad, he's always hungry'.
"I tried to climb over a fence and it took me about six goes."
Tom called his mum Louise and said he could not understand what his dad was saying.
By the time John got back to the house his symptoms had become more obvious and at Yorketown Hospital he presented with the left side of his face drooping and was vomiting.
He was diagnosed as having had a stroke and flown to the Royal Adelaide Hospital.
He will require some rehabilitation.
"The clot was in the front right-hand side of his brain where a high level of functioning and processing occurs," Louise explained.
"It has affected concentration, focus, memory, strategising and articulation."
At 49, John said he was about 30 years younger than other patients in the stroke ward, with the underlying cause attributed to a heart condition he has had all his life.
"I have atrial fibrillation which makes the atriums in my heart get a secondary impulse and makes my heart race at 140 to 170 beats a minute," he said.
"I carry medication and have a care plan but I missed that I was having an episode of it, which the doctors think might have occurred for some time before the stroke.
"Because the AF was uncontrolled for a long period it has weakened the ventricles and my heart is only functioning at 28 per cent."
John's heart was not pumping blood around his body as efficiently as it should and a clot formed which caused the stroke.
The prognosis for his heart's recovery is unknown at this stage.
He said being fit and healthy helped with his recovery but an inability to perform tasks such as climbing up the airseeder ladder in the days leading up to the stroke were signs he should have paid attention to.
"I was panting when I got to the top of the ladder and I thought 'I must be getting old'," he said.
"I didn't recognise the signs of AF and I think that was because it was seeding time, which can mean long days and high stress.
"But I'd never been breathless in my life and if I want to do something I do it."
In the middle of seeding John also spent one night fighting a house fire in Warooka. It is this community involvement which Louise said contributed to local farmers pulling together to help finish the family's seeding program.
Tom was tasked with finishing seeding, and with the help of a friend and neighbour, coordinated 15 farmers, seven airseeders, three spray units and several rock rollers, to finish the remaining 1214 hectares.
"So many people helped that we can't list them all and we don't know how to thank them," Louise said.
"We are so fortunate to live in such a fantastic community.
"John's always been involved in the community and paid it forward 10 times over so it is really nice people came to help him, and especially help Tom, who had a huge workload ahead of him.
"The night Tom rang and said 'we are done' we all had a bit of a cry."
