Danielle Collins absolutely adores cats. She works at a rescue and even fosters kittens.
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"I mean, look at them. They're so cute. How could you not love it?" she said.
She recently raised a litter, then had to say goodbye.
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"You definitely get really attached to them. It's hard when you have to give them up," she said.
Around the same time, she lost her father and was carjacked. This intensely stressful period came to a boiling point one day after she observed a cat having surgery.
Something's wrong "I felt lightheaded, dizzy," Danielle Collins said.
Collins managed to drive home and crawled into bed beside her husband, Matt Collins.
"I asked what was wrong, and she said her chest hurt," Matt Collins said.
"He said, 'Do you want to go somewhere?' And, I said, 'I think I should,'" Danielle Collins said.
The couple came to an intersection and something told Matt Collins to change course, which turned out to be a pivotal decision.
"[I] got into the right lane, as opposed to the left lane, and she said, 'Where are we going? We're not going to Patient First?'" Matt Collins said.
"He was like, 'If you're having chest pains, I'm taking you in straight to the hospital. We're not messing around with that,'" Danielle Collins said.
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They arrived at the emergency room at University of Maryland Harford Memorial Hospital in Havre de Grace.
"The doctor came out and said she was having a heart attack," Matt Collins said.
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She was dead for 75 minutes, then he watched as his wife essentially died, WBAL reported.
"It seemed like an eternity that, all of a sudden, she just wasn't awake, they didn't have a heartbeat, they're bringing out the paddles and shocking her," Matt Collins said. "You see it in movies and TV 1,000 times, and to see it done to your wife in front of you is like a dream."
Danielle Collins was without a heartbeat for over an hour.
"For 75 minutes, they shocked me 16 times, gave me 16 EPI injections, pretty much everything in the crash cart, and they did finally get me back," she said.
For Matt Collins, hearing the words, "We have a heartbeat" was overwhelming.
"I mean to go that long -- she was dead for 75 minutes -- you don't know what to think, and they warned me, 'It could be temporary. You don't know what we have from here on out. This is a good sign, but there could be the possibility of brain damage. Her heart could stop at any second. Temper your expectations,'" he said.
Danielle Collins was flown to the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, where electrophysiologist Dr. Timm-Michael Dickfeld was on the team that treated her.
"Her heart function was quite low," Dickfeld said.
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But after several hours, Danielle Collins began to recover - with no brain damage.
"That is quite uncommon," Dickfeld said. "I think she got really lucky."
Immediate cardiac care was crucial to Danielle's survival. Dickfeld said her husband's decision to turn left toward the hospital and get immediate cardiac care was crucial.
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"I think some guardian angel probably guided the steering wheel at this point," Dickfeld said.
So, what caused a 36-year-old healthy woman to have a near-fatal heart attack? Doctors theorize it's a case of "broken heart syndrome," a weakening of the heart muscle triggered by intense emotional stress.
"The stress hormones that we have, we call them catecholamines, just a fancy word, they can affect the heart function and they can do this directly acting on the heart muscle cells, and they can also result in spasms, where the vessels that bring blood and oxygen to the heart will just start to clamp down," Dickfeld said.
Dickfeld implanted a defibrillator in Danielle Collins' chest to protect her from a co-occurring abnormal heart rhythm, but overall, her prognosis is excellent.
"We hope that she is going to have a full and rich and normal life ahead of her," Dickfeld said.
Doctors emphasize the fact that Danielle Collins was at a hospital when her heart stopped, and she was able to receive immediate and sustained CPR likely saved her life and prevented brain damage.
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