By Colin Crummy
Four colleagues saved the life of a young reporter after she
suffered a heart attack and stopped breathing while at work at the
Norwich Advertiser.
Charlotte Dix, 25, a freelance reporter on the Archant Norfolk
newspaper, was saved when sales colleagues Richard Tree and Janice
Barker rushed to her side after she collapsed at her desk. They started
mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and heart massage before print technician
Dave Arkwright and security guard Jim Hughes arrived with a
defibrillator.
Tree said: “Basically she had died there and then.
Janice and I did chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth and she started
breathing. We realised she was not dead and so we kept it going and
then we got her back. We brought her back twice in the end and so we
kept it up and kept concentrating.
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“One of the ambulance staff
said he was doubtful she would have survived if we had not done what we
did. The firstaid training really paid off.”
Dix was transferred
to the intensive care unit at the Norfolk and Norwich University
Hospital and placed on a life support machine. She regained
consciousness three days later and is now recovering in the coronary
care unit.
She said: “I am really thankful to my workmates and it was brilliant to see my son again.
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“It
just feels like a long sleep. It was really odd suddenly finding myself
in hospital. I can’t remember what the story was I was writing. I have
got a complete blank. I don’t know what caused it.”
Dix was born
with a very rare heart defect – her heart is on the wrong side of her
body – and has to take daily medication for it. She gave birth to her
son Freddie in 2004, despite warnings from medical staff that doing so
could kill her. She previously worked as a full-time reporter at the
Norwich Advertiser and the Eastern Daily Press, but was working
freelance since having her child.
Dix was due to be moved to Papworth Hospital in Cambridge this week to have a heart pacemaker fitted.
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