When Sinead Reid saw her boyfriend lying on the living room floor, she assumed he was just playing with their dog.
But very quickly the 22-year-old realised Bradley Smith was not playing at all – he was having a cardiac arrest.
The fit, healthy and active 23-year-old had just returned home from work when he collapsed, struggling to breathe and going “bright red”.
Miss Reid sprang into action, quickly phoning 999.
The operator gave her instructions on how to start CPR as she waited for an ambulance to arrive.
Miss Reid, who lives in Bridge of Don with her boyfriend and 13-month old English Bulldog Brucey, said: “I could see from the length of the phone call that it took 12 minutes for an ambulance to come, so I had to do CPR for the whole 12 minutes.
“Three ambulances arrived, there was maybe about eight paramedics who came rushing in.
“Bradley had to be shocked by the defib twice.
“They were maybe here for about half an hour trying to wake him up.”
Plea for more people to know CPR
Miss Reid, who works as a domestic assistant, is now calling for “everyone” to have some basic CPR training.
“No one expected that to happen to Bradley,” she said, while praising the operators for talking her through the CPR.
“I mean all the nurses were saying that without that training, Bradley wouldn’t be alive.”
The former Northfield Academy pupil’s downtime was calculated at 40 minutes ahead of his arrival at A&E at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, where he was put into an induced coma.
The mechanical engineer spent a total of 31 days in hospital.
Three months on, he is still having regular check-ups at the hospital.
Doctors classed his case as a “mystery”.
Miss Reid added: “No one knows why it happened.
“He’s young, had a gym membership, he did Muay Thai, golfed regularly.
“He was quite an active person, and this is very uncommon to happen to people so young and fit.
“It doesn’t really feel like it happened to us, we never thought that Bradley would come home one day for his heart to just stop working.”
Couple know Bradley was lucky
Mr Smith fell ill on July 15, just days after celebrating Miss Reid’s graduation from the Robert Gordon University with a business management degree.
In the hours leading up to his cardiac arrest, he felt “completely fine”.
He has little recollection of what happened, and when he woke up in intensive care he had no idea why he was there.
Miss Reid says his recovery has been good and although he has some memory loss, the couple know how lucky he is to still be here.
“Bradley is really, really lucky to have minimal neurological defects,” she said.
“It’s just a little bit of memory loss. It doesn’t really affect his normal day-to-day life, it gets a bit annoying for him but it’s nothing compared to what it could have been.”
Raising awareness – and funds
Now the couple are focusing on raising awareness that sudden cardiac arrest can happen “to anyone, at anytime” and have organised a fundraiser for the Scottish Ambulance Service.
On Saturday, Miss Reid and her family will walk 15.7k – marking the 15th day of the seven month that Mr Smith collapsed.
The two have been “overwhelmed” by the support they have received, with more than £1,300 already raised.
Miss Reid said: “Even people he doesn’t really speak to are giving money, and I think it’s because it’s so close to home, and it’s probably really scary for people who are the same age as Bradley, knowing that this could also happen to them.
“We definitely never expected to get this much money from it, and there’s quite a lot of people who have offered to come along and do the walk with us on Saturday.
“We want people to be aware that this does happen, it’s not just something that you see on TV and in the papers.”
Conversation