Fowler is still susceptible to cardiac arrest, meaning he is liable to black out until a defibrillator placed under his rib cage jolts him back to consciousness with a 400-volt shock.
"If you feel it coming on you have about three to four seconds because once your heart stops, your blood pressure goes and basically you pass out,” he explained.
So Fowler, who rode for New Zealand at the Los Angeles, Seoul, Barcelona and Atlanta Olympics, has had to modify his lifestyle.
"I can’t go swimming, especially if I’m by myself in the sea, because if something happens I’ve only got a couple of seconds to try and get myself in a safe position.
"If I’m swimming the defib might kick your heart back into it, but by then you could’ve drowned,” he said.
"It’s the same with biking.
"Going uphill isn’t a problem, you can stop real quick.
"Downhill’s the problem because if something happens I can’t stop for at least 11-12 seconds if I’m going 70-80km/h.
"The defib will kick in, but you might have broken your neck in a crash."
Fowler survived his first near-death experience on February 25 last year, when he was unresponsive for 8min after fortunately pulling his van and trailer over outside West Rolleston Primary School as children headed home.
Staff and parents found him slumped at the wheel and then combined to perform CPR and use a defibrillator before paramedics arrived.
Fowler eventually emerged from a medically-induced coma, and suffered six more cardiac arrests before he was discharged.
The EV ICD detects when Fowler is having a cardiac arrest, takes nine seconds to determine a course of action and nine more seconds to charge up and activate.
"I was fast asleep one night at 12.40 (last October) and when I woke up I was puffing a bit, I wondered if I’d had a bad dream or something,” Fowler recalled.
"I checked my heart rate, that was good and I didn’t think anything of it, I went back to sleep.”
However, there was a rude awakening the next morning when an alarm sounded at home, prompting a trip to Christchurch Hospital, where cardiologists had analysed the defibrillator’s data.
"They said: ‘S**t, you’ve had a full-on cardiac arrest again’. If I hadn’t had the defib I’d have died in my sleep.
"It was really bad because nobody would have known. I was by myself, and even if my partner was there they probably would have slept through it.”
The technology, which measures 33 cubic centimetres, was also a lifesaver when Fowler collapsed during a supermarket visit three days into 2022.
"That time it took three goes to restart the heart, then I came to as if nothing had happened.
"I went to hospital and 3-½ hours later they said: ‘You’re fine, there’s nothing wrong. Blood pressure is fine, your heart is fine, there’s nothing wrong.”
"Hell yeah, cardiac arrest will kill you straight away, whereas a heart attack, you usually feel it coming on as chest pains or something like that.
"My heart’s actually fine. The doctor’s don’t know why it’s doing it and what causes it.
"You’ve just got to get on with life and do what you can, it’s just being aware of what might happen," said Fowler, a qualified electrician who was rewiring houses in Rangiora and Woodend this week.
He also has faith in the defibrillator, which is also being trialled in Canada - Fowler’s installation procedure was live-streamed to surgeons there.
"It’s got a battery life of 12-13 years, the normal ones are around 6-7.
"This one lasts a bit longer but seeing it’s already gone off I’ve knocked about a year out of it.
"Apparently it’s not too bad to take the battery and put another one in," he said.
