Brighton mum "forever grateful" after quick-thinking husband saves her life with CPR
Sarah Edmonds will get to see her daughter grow up - after collapsing at the end of her bed following a cardiac arrest
A Brighton mum says she's "forever grateful" after her quick-thinking husband saved her life with CPR following a cardiac arrest.
Sarah Edmonds was tending to her four-year-old one night in 2020 when she collapsed suddenly.
Hearing their daughter's cries, James leapt in:
"I found Sarah on the floor and she was making a strange noise.
"I thought she'd just been sleepwalking, but then quickly worked out she was unresponsive and began performing CPR on her.
"It's something I've never been trained in before, so all I knew about CPR was something I'd heard at some point, which was you need to be a lot more forceful with it than you are probably comfortable with."
It comes as new statistics from the British Heart Foundation reveal 51% of us would be too scared to perform CPR on a partner in case we hurt them.
"My recovery was so much better."
But with eight in 10 cardiac arrests happening in the home, Sarah said the outcome would have been much worse had James not stepped in:
"Every one of my ribs was broken, but that meant James had got to my heart and was pumping blood round to reach my brain for twenty minutes.
"The force of James doing CPR meant that it was effective, and that meant that my recovery was so much better, with limited side effects, as opposed to not doing CPR."
James continued compression until paramedics arrived, who took Sarah to hospital and putting her in an induced coma.
He agreed the effects could have been "a lot more severe":
"Sarah came round probably a lot more quickly than the doctors had said she might.
"And then having looked into what the likely side effects might be, it was quite apparent quickly that she was in a fairly good way versus what might be the average."
Plea for more of us to pick up the life-saving skill
Alongside the couple, the British Heart Foundation are urging more of us to pick up the life-saving skill.
They're reminding us that just one in 10 survive the 30,000 cardiac arrests that happen outside of a hospital setting each year.
Their free online app, Revivr, is available to learn CPR in just 15 minutes using just a phone, tablet, and a cushion.