She was ventilated for 11 days in hospital and her four children flew out to Spain as it was feared the worst might happen.
“I remember nothing until day four when I was brought round but a few hours later, I was ventilated again because both my lungs collapsed,” she said.
“I was woken four days later but I then developed laryngeal stridor, which makes your breathing noisy and harder to do, and which is potentially life-threatening, due to being ventilated too quickly, too many times. I then had to be ventilated again. “
It was not until February that she was allowed to fly home.
Even then she had to use a wheelchair, as she had experienced so much muscle wastage over her time in hospital.
She said it was “horrendous,” not just for her but for her husband and children.
“Never in a million years did I think something like this could happen to me.
“I was fit, healthy, ate really well, I had no worries about my health.”
When she returned home she had more problems.
“I wasn’t home long when I passed out one day and had to be admitted to Altnagelvin Hospital for a week.
“The pandemic started soon after I was discharged so unfortunately, I didn’t get any cardiac rehab which would have been so beneficial to my recovery.”
She has also suffered from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and has an ICD (implantable cardioverter defibrillator) fitted which is a small electrical device because she is at high risk of having another cardiac arrest.
Sandra’s heart attack and cardiac arrest continue to affect her life to this day and there are still days when she can “do very little”.
Even “something as simple as throwing a duvet on the bed”, can leave her breathless.
She has never been able to return to work, though she volunteers with NI Chest Heart and Stroke and enjoys sewing.
But she is upbeat and grateful to be alive.
“Not many people survive what my body put me through.”
All four of her children have tested clear for high blood pressure.
The Belfast Health Trust operates a screening service for what it calls a “silent condition”.
“When someone is diagnosed with FH, their relatives are contacted and offered testing by a team of specialist nurses who cover all of Northern Ireland,” a spokesperson said.
“Thanks to this programme, Northern Ireland has the highest rate of identification of FH in the UK and one of the highest rates of diagnosed cases in the world.”
The trust said that once people are diagnosed and established on long-term treatment with standard cholesterol-lowering medications, they do not generally need further intervention beyond “periodic cholesterol checks”.
