Health & Medicine

A Miraculous Recovery: Woman Revived After 45 Minutes Without Pulse

Kathleen Lees
First Posted: Nov 10, 2014 10:57 AM EST

The story you're about to read is a testament to the miracles of science.

Ruby Graupera-Cassimiro had gone 45 minutes without a pulse when doctors called her family into the waiting room to let them know there was simply nothing more they could do.

Just a few hours before, 40-year-old Graupera-Cassimiro had given birth to a healthy baby girl. However, her heart had soon after given out without warning following a routine cesarean section at Boca Raton Regional Hospital.

Then, something incredible happened: a blip came up on the monitor screen. Her heart had started beating again.

"There's very few things in medicine that I've seen, working in the trauma center myself and doing all the things that I do, that really were either unexplainable or miraculous," said Dr. Anthony Dardano, president of the hospital's medical staff, via Health Day. "And when I heard this story, that was the first thing that came to my mind."

They discovered that she had made a complete recovery and was taken off the life-support machine just one day after hear near-death experience on Sept. 23.

Doctors believe that amniotic fluid embolism may have been responsible for this rare, but serious condition that occurs when fluid surrounds a baby in the uterus and enters a mother's blood stream and heart, clogging it. This can cause the circulation to stop.

As amniotic fluid embolism is often not diagnosed until after death, Graupera-Cassimiro's survival shows that she beat the odds.

She returned back home shortly after the incident.

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