VIDEO: Florida Mom Miraculously Survives 45 Minutes Without a Pulse After a C-Section

by Cassy Fiano | November 11, 2014 2:05 pm

Childbirth can be dangerous — in fact, the day a woman gave birth used to be the most dangerous day of both her life and her baby’s. And while modern medicine has greatly changed that, there are still some risks, which one Florida mom discovered firsthand where her heart stopped during a C-section.

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A Florida mother is home and tending to her new infant less than a month after surviving without a pulse for 45 minutes following complications from a routine cesarean section.

A spokesman for Boca Raton Regional Hospital told The Associated Press on Sunday that a team of medical workers spent three hours attempting to revive the woman after a rare amniotic fluid embolism.

Spokesman Thomas Chakurda says the doctors were preparing to pronounce her death when a blip on a monitor indicated a heartbeat. Despite going 45 minutes without a pulse, she suffered no brain damage during the Sept. 23 ordeal.

“She essentially spontaneously resuscitated when we were about to call the time of death,” said Thomas Chakurda, the hospital spokesman.

Doctors had called the family into the operating room and told them there was nothing more they could do for 40-year-old Ruby Graupera-Cassimiro.

Graupera-Cassimiro gave birth to a healthy daughter before amniotic fluid entered her bloodstream and heart and created a vacuum, stopping circulation. Doctors say condition is often fatal.

Chakurda said the woman’s survival is a story of two miracles – her resuscitation and the fact that she survived without serious brain damage.

Medical workers used shock paddles and chest compressions throughout the emergency to try and restore heart beat and circulation, Chakurda said.

“Today she is the picture of health,” he said.

Doctors had no immediate explanation for her survival, Chakurda said, calling her case one of “divine providence.”

There is no explanation for how she survived, but somehow she did. It is literally a miracle, and maybe it was the prayers of her family that saved her.