The experience is something that has left its mark on Sandra. <\/p>\n
“I had three cracked ribs from the CPR (cardio-pulmonary resuscitation) and I was gone for 10 minutes before they got me back, which is terrifying to think about.”<\/p>\n
On the night she took ill, Sandra thought she had indigestion because of her “hiatus hernia” – a condition common in the over-50s, where part of the stomach moves up towards the chest. <\/p>\n
She alerted her husband when she began to feel an acute pain followed by a tingling sensation in her right arm. <\/p>\n
As he tried to check if the local health centre was open in the middle of the night Sandra’s pain left her and she started “drifting off”.<\/p>\n
“I was just falling into a deep sleep and he woke me, roaring at me, and shook me,” she said.<\/p>\n
She was told by a doctor she was having a major heart attack.<\/p>\n
Sandra was ventilated for 11 days in hospital and her four children flew out to Spain as it was feared the worst might happen.<\/p>\n
It was not until February that she was allowed to fly home.<\/p>\n
Even then she had to use a wheelchair, as she had experienced so much muscle wastage over her time in hospital.<\/p>\n
She said it was “horrendous,” not just for her but for her husband and children.<\/p>\n
“Never in a million years did I think something like this could happen to me.<\/p>\n
“I was fit, healthy, ate really well, I had no worries about my health.”<\/p>\n
Sandra also suffered from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and has an ICD (implantable cardioverter defibrillator) fitted which is a small electrical device because she is at high risk of having another cardiac arrest.<\/p>\n
Her heart attack and cardiac arrest continue to affect her life to this day and there are still days when she can “do very little”.<\/p>\n
Even “something as simple as throwing a duvet on the bed”, can leave her breathless.<\/p>\n
But she is upbeat and grateful to be alive.<\/p>\n
“Not many people survive what my body put me through.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The experience is something that has left its mark on Sandra. “I had three cracked ribs from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":801222,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[59,102,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-801221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-gb","tag-health","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=801221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/801222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=801221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=801221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=801221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}