Calgary doctor reunites with paramedics who saved her life

About six years ago, Grayzna Burek was clinically dead for 15 minutes before being revived. The 35-year-old Calgary woman recently reunited with the two men who stepped in to save her.

“I don’t have a lot of memory of the event so it’s scary to think about the situation but I think you just have to move forward.

“But I do make a point of celebrating my ‘deathiversary,'” Burek said.

She marks those so called ‘deathiversaries’ as reminder to appreciate life.

On May 31, 2015 Burek suffered a cardiac arrest while playing softball in north west Calgary.

Bystanders, including several nurses and an off-duty firefighter, provided CPR before paramedics Jack Cochrane and Richard Agnew showed up.

“We had to defibrillate her one more time and we got a pulse back on the way to the hospital,” Cochrane said.

At the time of the incident, Burek was in her second year of medical school and is now in her last year of medical residency.

As part of the residency program, she needs to take part in a two-day EMS ride-along.

Burek requested to be reunited with the two men who saved her life.

“I can say, ‘Thank you,’ and tell them all the stories, but what I feel in my heart can never be translated into words. They saved my life — literally,” said Burek, who started her ride-along shift with Cochrane and Agnew on Monday.

“This is more than likely a once-in-a-lifetime chance,” Agnew said, “where you actually do get to meet the patient afterwards and see them and see how well they’re doing.”

Her life-changing experience in the back of ambulance as a patient influenced Burek’s choice to become a pediatric emergency physician.

“You never want to be a patient but that experience… helped me connect with my patients a lot better than I would have ever been able to prior to this,” Burek said.

Few people survive an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.  According to the American Heart Association, about 90 per cent of people who experience an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest die.

“The high-quality bystander CPR was a major factor in the outcome with Grayzna,” said Agnew. “The off-duty firefighter and the nurses that were there recognized the severity of the situation right away and they started CPR and called for 911 and this is the proof today of that high-quality CPR.”

Because of her close call, Burek discovered she has an inherited heart condition that is now treated with medication and an implanted cardiac defibrillator.