On the day of my heart attack and cardiac arrest, I was having trouble sleeping and decided to call my friend in Australia. A few minutes after I finished the call, I felt an excruciating pain in the centre of my chest. I was able to wake my parents up, who then called 999. The pain only got worse and worse as we waited for an ambulance to arrive.

Once the paramedics arrived, they did an ECG and immediately told me that I was having a heart attack, which at the age of 20, I was not expecting to hear. I was carried downstairs to the ambulance and was only in the ambulance for a few minutes when I had my cardiac arrest and had to be shocked four times with a defibrillator.

I was so incredibly lucky that when I had my cardiac arrest I was already in the ambulance and was able to receive CPR immediately. It wasn’t until a few months later when I was able to meet and thank the amazing paramedics that saved my life, that they told me that it was only around 15 minutes from when they arrived to when I had my cardiac arrest. If they had arrived 15 minutes later, I would have had a cardiac arrest at home, where nobody in my family knew CPR or had a defibrillator, so I feel very lucky.