Here's a heart-stopping fact: every 90 minutes, a Kiwi dies from a heart disease.
Almost one in three deaths is caused by cardiovascular disease in New Zealand.
Champion marathon runner Maree Rajpal was close to becoming one of those statistics when her heart suddenly stopped in a marathon last year. But the quick actions of two men running behind her saved her life.
Rajpal came so very close to death.
"They were surprised that I made it," she says.
"There was a very small percentage that I would wake up... there was an even smaller percentage that I would wake up and be cognitively okay... and an even smaller percentage that I would leave hospital."
But it's at her home that we met Rajpal. She's a picture of health. A far cry from nearly a year ago.
It was the morning of May 14, 2021. She, along with 8000 others, had just started the Hawke's Bay marathon. A champion runner, she was feeling good - fit, fast, in the prime of her life.
But about two kilometres in, she suddenly felt faint so pulled over.
"So I paused my watch, as you naturally do, and then it just went black, it just went completely black, I don't remember anything from there," she says.
She'd gone into sudden cardiac arrest. Her heart had stopped but she was about to have an incredibly lucky break.
Running right behind her was a cardiologist and an orthopedic surgeon, who immediately began CPR.
"It was just so fortunate because it minimised the oxygen deprivation to my brain," she says.
"When you are doing CPR correctly it is hard work. I think I ended up with six broken ribs and my sternum cracked in half which was painful - further down the track - but it was a sign the CPR had been done correctly."
A defibrillator shocked her heart back to normal rhythm and she was then raced to hospital - but that ambulance trip was touch-and-go. She was continually flat-lining.
Her husband, also a doctor and her race support crew, was following right behind. He knew it wasn't good.
"My husband was calling family to come and say goodbye essentially."
But incredibly, against the odds, she pulled through. No side effects, brain function perfect. But she did have a life-saving device inserted near her heart.
"It monitors my heart rhythm, the moment it goes out of whack it shocks me back. It also has a pacemaker in there to pace my heart out of any strange rhythms."
She tells her kids she's iron-woman. She knows she's one of the lucky ones.
St John research shows there's a 13 percent chance of survival following cardiac arrest outside of hospital. And for every minute that goes by - without CPR or using a defibrillator - that chance of survival drops by 10 to 15 percent. And here are some more startling facts:
- 170,000 Kiwis are living with a heart disease right now
- Almost one in three deaths is caused by cardiovascular disease
- And every 90 minutes, a Kiwi dies from heart disease
So to give that context, every night from the start of our 6pm news until the end of The Project, heart disease will have claimed another Kiwi life.
Doctors believe Rajpal's heart condition dates back to a viral infection when she was a teenager and it caused her heart to scar.
But it took another 15 years for it to cause a serious problem thanks to a mixture of anxiety, caffeine, sugar and nerves on race day.
"And my heart's electrical pathways got into a pickle and it just stopped beating," she says.
She's kept reminders of her ordeal, her watch paused at the time she collapsed, the running clothes torn from her body. And a photo of the thank you note, written by her kids to the doctors who saved her life.
"I don't know what else you can say when someone saves your life and gives you everything back that you thought you'd lost. Yeah, wow," she says.
Rajpal has been an avid runner for more than 20 years. She's completed ultra-marathon events - up to 70km - and won the Wellington Marathon in 2011.
But since her cardiac arrest, life is now in a much slower lane. Daily walks or jogs instead of runs - one gentle step at a time.
