Jaimie says “I woke up around 4am on Thursday 7th March 2024 with central chest pain. I’d been battling a pretty severe dose of gastro in the days leading up to this, so I put the pain down to maybe an indigestion / gut type symptom from that. I tried to go back to sleep on and off and tried some antacids, but nothing was working, the pain was lingering and slowly getting worse. By 7am I decided it was time to call an ambulance – somewhere subconsciously I must have known things were off. Lucky I did call because the paramedics arrived around 7:15am and by 7:30am I was in cardiac arrest. One shock of the defib and I woke up on my bedroom floor. The next thing I knew, a MICA ambulance had been called, and firefighters were also at my house ready to support the emergency situation I now understand I was in. We travelled to the hospital via MICA ambulance and all they could tell me was I had a heart attack and cardiac arrest, but they couldn’t understand why given my age.

Fast forward to one angiogram later and I could hear the doctors and nurses discussing my condition around me. “What is SCAD?” I asked one of them. These days I know all about SCAD. As a healthy 38yo with good blood pressure, good cholesterol, good blood sugars, occasional drinker and non-smoker, not once in those moments of the early morning hours of 7th March had I considered it was ever my heart. As a mum to two young kids (10mo and 4yo at the time) that day was and still is the scariest day of my life – to think that I almost lost my life and they almost lost their mum. I’ll never be more grateful to the paramedics Justine and Katy for saving my life that morning and I am in awe of the work of paramedics and all that they do. Life is slowly shifting back to normal since SCAD and in some weird way it’s been a blessing to remind me to make the most of each day.”