According to the Daily Telegraph, Vanessa Tanasio, 41, was getting her children ready for school when she suddenly felt extreme pain in her chest. The Australian mother of two collapsed on the couch — she was having a heart attack.
Paramedics arrived and used defibrillator shocks to kick-start her heart, but when she got to the hospital, she suffered another attack on the operating table. The doctors then declared her clinically dead, reports the Daily Mail.
Luckily, the cardiologists had access to LUCAS 2, a new $15,000 automated chest compression machine, also known as ‘the thumper.’ The high-tech device is the only one of its kind used in Australian hospitals — and for 30 minutes, it gave her CPR to keep blood flowing to her brain and other vital organs. This allowed the surgeons to perform an emergency procedure on her heart, which brought it back to a normal rhythm.
A hospital spokesman called Tanasio’s survival “astonishing,” and the mother can’t believe it either.
“For someone who has been dead for nearly an hour, I am feeling tremendously well,” said Tanasio.
