A DAD-OF-TWO who survived 50 cardiac arrests over the space of 10 days has been described by doctors as ‘remarkable’.

Stephen Spence suddenly suffered a cardiac arrest while sleeping at his home.

His distraught wife Kate discovered him unresponsive and screamed for their eldest son Josh to call an ambulance.

As they waited for paramedics to arrive, Josh, 22, was given instructions on performing CPR by ambulance staff.

Mr Spence was taken to accident and emergency at Royal Blackburn Hospital where doctors confirmed he had suffered a cardiac arrest and his condition was critical.

In the following days Mr Spence went on to suffer dozens more cardiac arrests while in hospital, which doctors described as ‘extremely rare’.

Now able to return to work, the 52-year-old, who lives in Brunshaw, Burnley, has thanked the medics who saved his life.

Mr Spence said: “To me, it is as if it all happened to someone else as I was not there.

“I have been up to critical care and spoken to some of the staff and the matron joked with me that I was like a training aid for the staff as I needed so many shocks.”

Cardiac consultant Dr Ravi Singh said patients normally only suffer a small number of cardiac arrests.

He said: “For a person to have one or two cardiac arrests is quite common when a patient is just brought into a hospital with a heart condition, but this sheer number of cardiac arrests over such a prolonged period of time is extremely rare.”

From A&E, Mr Spence was taken to the cardiac catheter lab where consultant Scot Garg unblocked two of his main arteries with stents before he was transferred to critical care.

While in hospital, doctors also did a scan and found he was suffering from hypoxic brain injury because his brain had been starved of oxygen.

Mr Spence’s family was told by doctors they were concerned about potential brain damage and warned to prepare for the worst.

Before his first cardiac arrest on December 9 last year, he had been healthy and there had been no signs of heart problems.

After each arrest, medics needed to shock his heart to get it to beat again.

Mr Spence’s ordeal saw him kept in intensive care throughout Christmas but after turning a corner and becoming stable, he was moved to the coronary care ward and improved day-by-day.

Towards the end of January this year, he went to Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester where he had a mini defibrillator, designed to shock his heart if it was to stop, fitted.

The dad, who also has a 12-year-old son Jack, is now home and rehabilitating, and his incredible recovery has seen him recently return to his work as an operations manager at a security firm.

Mr Spence said: “I had absolutely fantastic care. Nursing and medicine is a vocation and I have a lot of time and respect for anyone within that profession.

“The doctors and nurses who looked after me gave it their all and were brilliant. I can never repay them for what they did for me. They are lifesavers.”

Now he wants to encourage people not to dismiss anything unusual as he said a couple of weeks before his cardiac arrests, he thought he had indigestion.

He said: “I thought it was just heartburn or indigestion.

“Maybe if I’d gone to the doctors at that stage, things might not have got as serious as they did.

“I feel great now and even better than I did before I went into hospital.”

Mrs Spence said: “The critical care staff were outstanding.

“Some of the nurses wouldn’t even go for their lunch break as they didn’t want to leave Stephen.

“If it wasn’t for all the staff being so caring and supportive, we wouldn’t have got through it.

“We are just glad Steve has made such a wonderful recovery and lived to tell the tale.”

Dr Singh said: “I think it is remarkable that Stephen has made such a great recovery and we all need stories like Stephen’s to motivate ourselves and remind ourselves that what we do at the trust is life changing, not just for the patient, but also their family.”