A wife brought her husband back to life by performing CPR -- after he ‘died’ for nearly an HOUR.
When Sanita Lazdauska, 39, climbed out of bed one morning, leaving husband Juris Lazduaskis, 45, snoring away, she thought he was asleep.
But she noticed he was making strange sounds and watched in horror as he stopped breathing and turned blue.
Fast-thinking Sanita, a mum-of-two, jumped into action and called for an ambulance, and listened as a call handler told her she’d have to perform life-saving CPR.
The cleaner dragged him off the bed and onto the floor, and performed compressions, keeping blood flowing through his body, while his heart had stopped.
Heroic Sanita managed to keep going for a staggering half an hour before paramedics arrived - and it was 50 minutes in total before Juris’ heart started beating again.
Factory worker Juris suffered a cardiac arrest, and had it not been for his wife’s efforts, he would not have survived.
A year on, the family from Cregduff, Ballinrobe, in Mayo, held a ‘rebirth’ party, inviting the paramedics and doctors who helped save him.
Sanita said: “He always talks about his first life and said this is his second life.
“It was very emotional to see them all, to sit down and have a chat.
“They were delighted to see him doing so well because the majority of cases they attend the outcome is very different.
“So it was nice for the team to see someone they had saved.
“If there was no CPR, there would be no hope for him.”
Juris went into cardiac arrest at around 7am on March 4, 2019.
Sanita said: “I heard he was making a funny noise - something unusual.
“I turned around and it sounded like he was snoring, but it wasn’t a normal snore.
“I thought that he was having a fit because he was curled up.
“I tried to shake him and wake him up but he wouldn’t stop. His eyes were open, but I knew he couldn’t see me.
“I was saying to him ‘what’s going on, wake up’. It lasted a minute and then he fell back, limp and blue, and stopped breathing.
“That’s when I knew, we’re in trouble.”
After 30 minutes of her starting CPR, the emergency services arrived and took over.
After putting him into a coma, he woke up a day later with no memory of his brush with death.
His wife said: “He kind of knew who he was, who I was and the kids, but not much else.
“It doesn’t happen like the movies where they wake up and everything’s happy. He was very confused and agitated.”
He had an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) placed in him, to measure heart activity, which delivers a shocks in the event of an abnormality.
Since the arrest, he has received shocks from the ICD twice, sending him back into hospital.
With a change in his medication and an adjustment of the defibrillator, Juris was back to work just 10 months after his heart attack.
Sanita is humble about her efforts and added: “There was not much time to think about me being a hero.
“At the moment its just part of our life, it's just one of the experiences. It’s a tough one, but you can't choose.
“He’s delighted to be here and he’s enjoying life, he is making the most of it.”
