On a normal afternoon, a 20-year-old girl named Jazmin Garza from the USA, a , suddenly felt dizzy, fell to the ground and started convulsing.
This fitness enthusiast’s boyfriend noticed that her heart had stopped beating and her breathing had stopped, so he immediately performed CPR until the paramedics arrived and used an electric sh0ck device to get her heart beating again.
Yet, this was just the beginning of Jazmin’s nightmare. On the way to the hospital, her heart stopped beating many times, the longest lasting up to 5 minutes.
Each cardiac arrest deprived her brain and organs of oxygen, causing serious damage to her lungs, kidneys,and heart.
Doctors had to put her on life support and told her family: “She needs a miracle to survive and recover into the Jazmin we know.”
“On a day at the end of November last year, I was working out at the gym and suddenly felt very uncomfortable. I don’t usually drink caffeinated drinks, but that day I tried this energy drink to improve my condition. Surprisingly, not long after drinking it, I felt dizzy, pale, and then passed out,” Jazmin recalled.
Later, her boyfriend said to her that she had epilepsy, a condition he had never seen before.
At the hospital, Jazmin was put on three different life support machines, including ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) to help oxygenate her blood, a dialysis machine to remove waste from her kidneys, and a machine to control her oxygen levels.
Doctors also implanted a defibrillator to monitor her heart rhythm and give her an electric shock if anything went wrong.
In spite of extensive testing, doctors were unable to determine the exact cause of Jazmin’s cardiac arrest.
After two weeks of fighting for her life, Jazmin made a miraculous recovery.
“Every day I got stronger and the doctors ran a lot of heart tests on me and they all came back normal. They couldn’t find any heart problems and couldn’t explain why this happened,” she said.
According to Jazmin, the caffeine-containing energy drink may have combined with her underlying heart problems to cause the crisis.
“I never paid much attention to my heart health in the past, and I mistook occasional palpitations for anxiety,” she admits. “Now it seems like I may have always had this problem, but I never took it seriously.”
Though Jazmin eventually recovered, the experience had a huge impact on her and her boyfriend’s lives.
They both lost their jobs because of having to take extended leave to care for Jazmin, and are facing huge hospital bills.
The near-de:a:th experience also gave Jazmin a new perspective on life. “I feel like I was given a second life,” she says. “If this had happened when I was alone, or a few years later, I might not be alive. The doctors said it was a miracle and I was literally one step away from death.”
The young woman urges people to pay attention to their body’s signals and check for potential health problems in time to avoid major disasters.
Meanwhile, the energy drink contains 200mg of caffeine, twice as much as two cups of coffee. Though the drink contains a variety of vitamins and nutrients, high levels of caffeine can pose a risk to heart health, especially for people with underlying heart conditions.