At the time, Nevin worked on his farm with his brother, milking and feeding cows each day.
“It has to be done, it doesn’t matter what is happening, that has to be done every day,” he said.
Despite experiencing the chest pain, Nevin ate his breakfast and went to work on the farm for five hours.
He arrived home for lunch at about midday and his wife Lorna, who is a nurse, saw he was still in pain and told him she was taking him to hospital.
Nevin insisted on driving himself to Causeway Hospital in Coleraine.
At this point, Nevin said the pain in his chest was “ramping up”.
Tests were carried out at the hospital and Nevin was informed he was having a heart attack. He was then blue-lighted by ambulance to Altnagelvin Hospital in Londonderry.
“It was quite a shock,” Nevin said. He said the news of the heart attack hit him “like a ton of bricks”.
“I had just come off a working day. Every day previous to that I had no symptoms that were leading up to this that I was ignoring. You’re just coming from total normality and routine to ‘bang’.”
A heart attack happens when the supply of blood to the heart is suddenly blocked, usually by a blood clot. This is a medical emergency. A lack of blood to the heart may seriously damage the heart muscle and this can be life threatening.