By Luke Voogt
For Inverleigh’s Joanne Parke, there was nothing like waking up in ICU to help her quit smoking.
The then otherwise healthy 37-year-old suffered a cardiac arrest in 2009, which stopped her heart beating for 45 minutes.
Ms Parke wasn’t the “usual stereotype” for a cardiac arrest, and said her case was proof it could happen to anyone.
“At that age, I hadn’t even thought about it.”
Ms Parke was at home with her three children cooking tea, when she began to feel tightness in her chest.
“I rang my husband and asked him to come home from work,” she said.
Ms Parke described her symptoms to a triple-zero operator while her husband helped with the children.
“He came back a few minutes later to find me in full cardiac arrest,” she said
Her husband started compressions and the paramedics arrived soon after.
Over the next hour, paramedics gave Ms Parke eight shocks with a defibrillator, adrenalin and fed tubes into her lungs, while her husband continued CPR.
In hospital, doctors informed her family she had a four per cent chance of survival.
“Thanks to my husband’s quick response and the amazing medical team, I managed to beat the most ridiculous odds,” she said.
Ms Parke said she was fit at the time of the cardiac arrest and had had to change little since, save quitting smoking.
But she said the incident had made her more aware of risk factors, like family history.
She spoke at an information session for the Heart Foundation’s Big Heart Appeal on Tuesday with her father Phillip Ward, who remarkably survived a heart attack himself.
The 88-year-old has collected for the Big Heart Appeal for the past 12 years, despite three stents, three pacemakers and double bypass surgery.
Mr Ward was 57 when he had a heart attack while playing golf. He remembered a dull ache in his chest and “not feeling too bright”.
“I was just feeling uncomfortable,” he said.
“I was never in any great pain.”
He finished the game of golf and returned home, before his wife took him to hospital.
“The next moment I’m flat on my back with two nurses and doctor looking down at me,” he said.
The Grovedale resident said he didn’t even know he was having a heart attack until the bearded doctor leant over to tell him so.
His genes were risk factor for his daughter despite her good health and age, he said.
“I was completely gobsmacked to think it could happen someone as fit and as young as she.”
The Heart Foundation’s annual Big Heart Appeal door knock takes place across Australia this month.
Member for South Barwon Andrew Katos was at the information session to thank volunteers for their efforts.
He urged locals dig deep for the door nock or donate online at bigheartappeal.org.au
