Woman dead for 20 minutes

For 20 minutes, Danielle Hogno was clinically dead.

She lay lifeless on the floor after suffering a heart attack at work. She wasn't breathing and had no pulse.

The 18-year-old owes her life to one man - workmate Graham Meyer, who fought desperately to resuscitate her until the ambulance arrived.

Doctors say Danielle's survival is a miracle that hinged on Mr Meyer's efforts performing cardio pulmonary resuscitation (CPR), breathing air into her lungs and pumping her chest, which fed oxygen to her brain.



"She was gone. She'd gone blue in the face and her eyes were black pools,'' said Mr Meyer, "a stubborn bugger'' who never gives up.

In an eerie coincidence, Mr Meyer, 59, was also saved from the brink of death - at 18 - from drowning.

Doctors who treated Danielle at Tamworth Base Hospital last month told her parents it was a one-in-15-million chance that she survived without brain damage.

But after a month of intensive hospital treatment, including surgery to fit a defibrillator pacemaker, Danielle is on the slow road to recovery.