In February 2020, I had a VF cardiac arrest.

My memories start a week after the event when I awoke in ICU.

I was confused and initially unable to move. My family were at my bedside and told me what had happened.

Amazingly, I had survived not only the arrest, but also aspiration pneumonia, sepsis and a stage 3 acute kidney injury requiring dialysis.

My first episode caught me completely off guard on a Sunday morning in 2014. I was an active, healthy 35-year-old mother of 3. It felt like what I imagined having a heart attack would feel like. After a minute or two it stopped as suddenly as it had started and I got out of bed to start my day, I had experienced palpitations before and brushed it off as a once off.

I had about 8 more episodes before lunch time and made a deal with myself that if it continued, I would call an ambulance. I was a busy mum and didn’t want to be ‘dramatic’! It resolved by 2 p.m.

When I was 39, with zero risk factors for heart disease, I had all the classic symptoms associated with a heart attack. My doctors put me on three blood thinners to dissolve a clot in a minor artery seen in an angiogram. The next day, while the original clot had dissolved, I had a clot in a larger artery. Baffled, the cardiologists put in a stent. As they backed the scope out of the artery, it spasmed in another location.

At that time, I had a 4-year-old, an 8-year-old, and a 12-year-old. My husband traveled extensively for work. I asked myself two questions: 1) How do I feel about dying at age 39? 2) If I don’t die, how do I live?