‘MY HUSBAND HELD MY LIFE IN HIS HANDS’
Sarah Edmonds, 34, from Sayers Common, East Sussex, was saved by her husband. She says, “In December 2020, my daughter Arabella, four, woke up in the middle of the night. I jumped out of bed to check on her, but when I went into her bedroom,
I felt a stabbing pain in my chest and let out a strangled sound before collapsing at the end of the bed.
“Arabella thought I was playing and was giggling so loudly that my husband James, 39, woke up and came into the room, where he found me face down at the bottom of the bed. Terrified, he called 999.
When he realised I had no pulse, he was advised to start doing CPR. He’d never done it before and had only seen it on TV, but he had no choice but to try as it would be 20 minutes before an ambulance arrived. If James didn’t resuscitate me, I faced brain damage or even death.
“Paramedics eventually arrived and stabilised me before I was rushed to Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton. I’d had a sudden cardiac arrest but no one knew why. Doctors operated and put in a defibrillator in case my heart went out of rhythm again. Over the next year my heart stopped beating three times and was re-started by the defibrillator. Doctors eventually diagnosed me with Long QT, a condition I must have acquired in adulthood that meant my heartbeat fell out of the right rhythm.
“I am so grateful to
James for staying calm in such a frightening situation. His quick thinking meant he saved my life. While I can’t do CPR myself now due to weakness in my hand from the cardiac arrest, I want to encourage as many people as possible to familiarise themselves with it. It only takes 15 minutes to learn but could be the difference between life and death.”