Evelyn Walker had been preparing for a normal day at school when she went into cardiac arrest
A teenager from the UK is speaking out after suffering a cardiac arrest at school, urging others to trust their instincts when something feels wrong with their body even if doctors brush it off.
17-year-old Evelyn Walker, who lives in Hertfordshire, said her day started off like any other this past February. But things took a terrifying turn that would completely change her life.
She said she got up in the morning, had her usual breakfast, and walked to school with a friend. They arrived around 8:30 a.m., with no sign that anything was out of the ordinary.
"I felt fine that morning. Everything was normal until I started getting chest pains." she recalled.
Not long after that, Evelyn began to feel unwell. She described feeling nauseous, and then everything suddenly went black—she had collapsed.
"I don't have any memories of the event. I completely blacked out. I just remember waking up in hospital a couple of days later." she said.
It wasn’t until later that Evelyn learned what had happened. Right after she collapsed, school staff sprang into action. One teacher began CPR while another ran to get the defibrillator kept on campus.
The school’s medical officer joined in and had to shock Evelyn twice in an urgent attempt to get her heart beating again.
Evelyn believes her heart had completely stopped for about five minutes before she was revived. Afterward, she was rushed to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, where doctors placed her in a coma that lasted three days.
Her mother, Jennifer, later described the entire experience as the most terrifying moment of her life. She shared: "I was in bed asleep having a lie in and heard my phone going then just saw the word 'ambulance' on my phone."
"I just thought Evelyn had bumped her head or fallen over. Then the police were on my doorstep and I just thought she was dead. It was absolutely awful."
Jennifer said nothing like this had ever happened before. Evelyn had always been active and healthy, and it made the sudden event even harder to process.
Before the incident, there hadn’t been any major warning signs that caught medical attention.
Evelyn did have occasional chest pain in the past, and she went to the doctor to get it checked out. But it was brushed off and labeled as anxiety.
She said the pain was never looked into beyond that, and no tests were done at the time to dig deeper into the possible cause.
Evelyn now suspects there may have been an undetected heart condition that went unnoticed for too long. Doctors are still doing tests, and they now believe there could be abnormalities in her heart.
Even so, the official cause behind the cardiac arrest is still being determined.
"We still don't know if that [the chest pains] was linked." Evelyn said. "I'm quite frustrated I was just told it was anxiety, just because I'm a young person. I'm sure if I was over 60 complaining of chest pain, they would've looked into it further."
She ended up staying in the hospital for a full month after collapsing. During that time, doctors fitted her with an internal defibrillator to help prevent something like this from happening again.
Now that she’s on the road to recovery, Evelyn is sharing her story to raise awareness and encourage others to pay close attention to their symptoms.
"My outlook on life has really changed." she said. "I thought I was young and healthy and nothing like this would ever happen to me..."
"Don't just assume doctors are right. You know your own body better than anyone else and if you think something is off then don't be afraid to push and get it investigated. Heart problems can affect anyone."
To help others learn more about sudden cardiac arrest in young people, Evelyn’s mom, Jennifer, created a Facebook page called Young Hearts UK. Through the platform, she hopes to inspire more people to learn CPR and get trained to use AEDs—Automated External Defibrillators.
"Sudden cardiac arrest is fairly rare for young people but not unheard of. In fact, 12 young people under 35 die each week in the UK from a SCA. That's why we want people to know CPR and to know where their nearest defibrillator is." the mom said.