‘Your brain tricks you’: The Block’s Courtney opens up about scary health battle

EXCLUSIVE: Courtney’s scary experience with SVT was captured on Monday night’s episode of The Block, but it wasn’t the first time it happened on site.

Opening up about the health condition to nine.com.au, the Project Manager revealed it had already happened twice on site, but she had been able to hide it.

“I’m pretty used to SVT, but when it happens, it obviously scares Sevi… she probably would have cancelled her whole day and had me in the emergency room,” Courtney said.

“It was one of those things that it had already happened twice on the show, which no one saw or no one knew about, I just went to the bathroom and sorted it out.”

SVT is a heart condition that causes a rapid heartbeat, caused by an electrical abnormality in the heart, according to the Victor Chang Research Institute.

She felt the supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) attack coming on while she and Sev were trying to plan the layout of a few rooms in the house, but she decided to keep it to herself.

Once Sev had left, a cameraman realised something was wrong. He offered to call an ambulance for Courtney, which she quickly declined.

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When Courtney’s SVT attack lasted more than 20 minutes, she decided to call fellow Blockhead and Paramedic Lisa, from House 3 for help.

“Lisa and I didn’t have a close relationship at this point. It was more that she was a professional,” she explained.

“So if I call asking for medical advice, she’s just going to snap straight into the logical thought process just to talk me through it, because I got to the point where I wasn’t able to sort of stop it myself.”

Courtney revealed the specific reason she didn’t want to call an ambulance to site, despite knowing it was a bad attack this time.

“The thought of having an ambulance on site in front of all those blokes... when I broke my spine on a job site, I didn’t even call an ambulance,” she explained.

“I would walk to the hospital before I (call an ambulance to site). It’s just a funny old thing for me.”

Sev added that working in a male-dominated industry as a woman can ingrain that thought process into you.

“I think Courtney, as a female site manager, already has so much to fight against and earn respect... these sort of little things, as bad as it is to say out loud, you do get judged,” Sev said.

Courtney said she and Lisa agreed that if she couldn’t get it under control after five rounds of intervention techniques, she would call an ambulance.

“You can go into a little bit of a panic, and other symptoms come up,” Courtney said.

“I know exactly what’s happening, but your body starts tricking you because you start sweating, and you start going clammy, and you’re absolutely not having a heart attack, but your brain starts tricking you.”

Courtney was diagnosed with SVT in 2022 after experiencing a rapid heart rate for several hours.

“I always knew that there was something going on with my heart because every now and then it would skip beats, or it would flutter for a little bit and I’d have heart palpitations, which is quite common. So I just put it down to that,” she said.

“There was one day I was having heart palpitations. I was having a family lunch, and half an hour later, I was still having these bloody heart palpitations, and I thought, hang on, this isn’t right.

“I started getting a little bit short of breath. I was just hoping and praying my damn family would leave my house so I could call an ambulance, but when they wouldn’t, and it had been so long, I ended up calling one.

“When they got there, they just struck me straight up to an ECG machine and it came up straight away.”

She added that SVT, while scary, is not fatal.

The Block 2026 houses have officially hit the market! Take a closer look at the full home listings here:

House 1: Adam and Jolene

Bedrooms: 4 | Bathrooms: 3 | Car spaces: 4 | Price guide: $3.6 million to $3.9 million

View the full listing on the Domain website here.

House 2: Chantel and Wyatt

Bedrooms: 4 | Bathrooms: 3 | Car spaces: 4 |Price guide: $3.6 million to $3.9 million

View the full listing on the Domain website here.

House 3: Lisa and Rosco

Bedrooms: 4 | Bathrooms: 3 |Car spaces: 4 | Price guide: $3.6 million to $3.9 million

View the full listing on the Domain website here.

House 4: Courtney and Sev

Bedrooms: 4 | Bathrooms: 3 | Car spaces: 2 |Price guide: $3.6 million to $3.9 million

View the full listing on the Domain website here.

House 5: Rick and Tayla

Bedrooms: 4 | Bathrooms: 3 |Car spaces: 2 | Price guide: $3.6 million to $3.9 million

View the full listing on the Domain website here.