Zach Hilary, aged two, suffered a heart attack on Jan 26, when his mother, Trudy, found him collapsed on the floor, groaning, at their home. Zach’s heart stopped beating for 39 minutes as his mother called an ambulance and performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on her son for 10 minutes until the paramedics arrived and took over. Mrs Hilary, 40, a paramedic, and her husband Dave, 37, were told that Zach had swelling on his brain. “It felt like an absolute lifetime waiting to find out if he would live or die. The doctors told me that his heart had stopped beating for 39 minutes, and to prepare myself for the worst.” Five months on, the toddler is back at home with his parents and his brothers Jake, five, and six-month-old Scott. When Zach was taken off a ventilator, an MRI scan revealed that his brain had been damaged. He was given physiotherapy and speech therapy and on Feb 27 was finally able to go home. The cause of the heart attack is a mystery. Mrs Hilary has since been on a resuscitation course in case it should happen again.
