I’m Elizabeth Hobbie, and this is my story. I've always tried to walk for exercise and

just taking my normal walk I started to feel pain, going up hills especially. Nothing was

really helping, so eventually I did go to my primary care physician and she did an EKG

in the office that day and it was abnormal. She said, "Well, I want you to see a cardiologist."

We initially didn't believe there could be anything seriously wrong because we were young

and (because) we took care of ourselves. The initial coronary arteriogram was very surprising

in that she had a nearly 99% blockage in the main left coronary artery and then we shot

the other coronary artery and found the same thing. When we realized 'angiographically'

that she had this really severe issue going on, the room completely changed. She started to develop rhythm disturbances

and went into what's called ventricular fibrillation...that’s a cardiac arrest situation, so we began the

measures to resuscitate her heart. The problem that we were having was that she wouldn’t

go out of ventricular fibrillation, despite all of our best measures. We placed the stent

in her left main coronary artery and got it fully open. The heart was still fully arrested.

I remember praying with the chaplain and telling our children that momma was very sick but

that I loved them very much. A decision was made that we put her on cardio-pulmonary bypass

in the operating room. CPR was being done down the hallway, in the elevator, up to the

O.R., into the O.R, and kept going in the O.R. for at least an hour until they were

able to put he bypass machine in. The doctor came down afterwards and told me that there

was a very real chance that she was brain dead. I’ve never seen anybody recover after

two hours of CPR. I prayed for Elizabeth and for our family and begged for her life. The

next day I was talking to her and holding her hand and telling her to open her eyes...and

she did. And it only got more incredible over the next 30 days. We thought that her only

recourse was going to be to get a (heart) transplant, so we made arrangements to go

over to California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. When she got to CPMC after

a couple of days her heart started beating again on its own. I remember waking up in

the hospital room and seeing my extended family around the bed and just thinking, 'wow everyone’s

here, what happened?' I started breathing more on my own each day until eventually they

took the machine off after eleven days. Having Elizabeth health again means everything to

me. I can't thank the doctors, nurses and technicians enough that care for Elizabeth

and saved her life. I think it probably was a miracle that so many pieces came together

the way they did. I’m Elizabeth and that’s my story.