Last June, our donor, Mary Jane, sat down on her couch to watch TV just like any other day. “The last thing I remember of that night is my son asking me a question. He said: ‘Mom, if you don’t answer me, I’m calling 911. I was sure I had answered his question but apparently, I hadn’t.

She does not remember the next few hours of her life; her heart had stopped beating.

“I remember waking up at the hospital, and my siblings and niece were all there. I had no idea where I was and why.” The 911 operator had talked her son through performing CPR, Mary Jane would later learn, until the paramedics arrived and continued his efforts. She was rushed to the Marotta Family hospital in St. Catharines.

“Apparently, I kept repeating everything when I first woke up,” Mary Jane chuckles and adds that she kept talking about the tee times she had to organize for her women’s golf league during those first moments. As much as Mary Jane and her family make light of it now, at the time, it was a concern for her loved ones. “It wasn’t clear yet what sort of damage my cardiac arrest had caused,” she says, “so the fact that I was repeating everything was very scary for my family at the time.”

As she regained her strength at the hospital, Mary Jane couldn’t have been more grateful for the care she received. “Everybody was just so comforting; they made me feel safe. It’s frightening what I went through but I was so impressed by everyone’s care and concern,” Mary Jane remembers. “You could tell that their compassion was genuine. They cared to their core.”

Her cardiologist, Dr. Pinilla, ensured Mary Jane would get scheduled for surgery to insert a defibrillator in her chest as soon as possible. “Dr. Pinilla couldn’t be a kinder, nicer person. I was obviously not feeling very well, and here was this stranger, seeing me hooked up to machines in such a fragile moment, but her kindness made all the difference for me.”

It took some time for Mary Jane to realize the severity of what had happened to her. “It didn’t fully hit me until one of my cardiologists actually used the word ‘dead’ and someone told me the percentage of people who survive what I had survived,” she remembers. “I guess there was a part of me that was trying to protect myself from letting it sink in – what had happened to me and what my son had to do that night.” A few weeks after her cardiac arrest her son told Mary Jane why he happened to be there that night. “He said he heard his late dad say ‘stop working and go upstairs.’ That’s why he came up. He normally would never have come up at that time.”

When Mary Jane returned home, her recovery wasn’t easy. Her ribs had been hurt from the CPR and her body had been through a lot. “I’m 73,” she laughs and says that she is grateful that today, she is mostly back to where she was before her cardiac arrest. “My golfing days might be over,” she adds, “but I’m alive, and that’s all that matters.”

Grateful for a health system that saved her life, Mary Jane’s message to the community is clear: “If you can, donate! You never know when the day comes that you will need the hospital, and I, for one, can’t thank the healthcare team at Niagara Health enough for being there when I needed them. There are no words that can express the extent of my gratitude. It’s just right here,” she says, pointing to her chest and adding with a smile,” in my working heart.”