By LACHLAN MOORHEAD
VANESSA Tanasio – clinically dead for 42 minutes – had just one thought when the doctors brought her back to life.
Reaching for a piece of paper at her bedside, the Narre Warren South mother of two – who doctors thought might never write or speak again – scrawled the word “kids”.
That scrap of paper, passed to her mother Virginia, marked the miracle mum’s recovery.
Vanessa, a 41-year-old mother of two, was rushed to Monash Medical Centre in Clayton last week after a severe heart attack at home.
At the hospital Ms Tanasio suffered a cardiac arrest which technically killed her.
Doctors at Monash used a new CPR machine called a LUCAS 2 External Compression device to keep blood flowing to Ms Tanasio’s brain after the cardiac arrest, allowing them to perform emergency stent surgery on her blocked artery.
Ms Tanasio said without the LUCAS 2 machine, one of only two in Australia, she wouldn’t be alive today.
“I wouldn’t be here without it. It was keeping oxygen in my brain,” she said.
“The surgeons were stoked. They were making calls to other doctors in the hospital to let them know what had happened.”
Ms Tanasio, en ex-smoker with a family history of heart problems, started having chest pains on the morning of Monday 12 August which prompted her mother, Virginia, to call the ambulance.
“I had no clue it was coming. I got up to go to work and had chest pains,” Ms Tanasio said.
“I went down and got Mum and she said something must be wrong because it’s not like me to complain.”
Virginia said she feared the worst when she arrived at the hospital shortly after the ambulance.
“I was met by two staff and they painted a very bad picture” she said.
“I was told it was unlikely she would ever talk or write again.”
Interventional Cardiology Fellow Peter Psaltis, who operated on Ms Tanasio under cardiologist Wally Ahmar, said past cases gave the doctors hope that Ms Tanasio could be revived despite her heart stopping.
“Although she had the cardiac arrest, it happened in front of us and we were able to start CPR right away and gauge her response,” he said.
Dr Psaltis said if the Monash team had not unblocked Ms Tanasio’s artery, the situation would have been almost irreversible.
“If we hadn’t got it open, her heart muscle would not have gone back to beating on its own,” he said.
“Her recovery is certainly at the more remarkable end of the spectrum.”
Ms Tanasio was sedated after her surgery and didn’t open her eyes until Wednesday 14 August.
She was released from hospital this week after making a full recovery and is happy to be back at home with her children, Ella, 11, and Max, 9.
While she can’t remember anything from the 42 minutes when she was clinically dead, Ms Tanasio said she was eternally grateful that the doctors kept trying.
“Why the hell did they waste 42 minutes once I was dead? I don’t know,” she joked.
“But I’m glad they kept trying.”
