“I’ve got a second chance at everything in my life.”

I had been feeling sluggish for a couple of months and chalked it up to Calgary being hot and smoky that summer because of the wildfires. As a baby, I had been diagnosed with a heart defect (a bicuspid aortic valve) that made me sometimes short of breath when I was younger, but my condition stabilized by my 20s. I was physically active, playing hockey, running, working out at the gym, and snowboarding.

That day, I was out for a run and felt lightheaded, so I stopped to catch my breath. I started running again on a street leaving a wooded area. That’s the last thing I remember until I woke up in the emergency room in Foothills Hospital.

Apparently, I had collapsed on the sidewalk. I didn’t realize it then, but I was lucky. Thirty seconds earlier, I would have been in the woods, and no one would have seen me. Luckier still, the car that pulled over to help was driven by a cardiac surgeon. Dr. Corey Adams and his physician wife Jennifer called 911 and started doing CPR on me until the paramedics arrived and used a defibrillator to restart my heart.

Three days later, it was Dr. Adams who performed my surgery, replacing my aortic valve as well as my ascending aorta with a mechanical valve and prosthesis. I got involved in a cardiac rehab program and slowly started working out again. It took a while for me to get my level of energy back. I’m temporarily on a couple of drugs to lower my heart rate and blood pressure while everything is healing, but I will likely always be on a blood thinner because there’s a risk of blood clots forming on the artificial surfaces of my valve.

I still have anxiety around working out. I have a heart rate monitor now and always wear it when doing physical activities. I followed up on some really good advice I got early on about looking after my mental health and seeing a therapist to help me navigate my residual anxiety and my new life after cardiac arrest.

It may sound superficial, but my identity was tied to being a fit, strong, active person and then suddenly that was taken away. I have had to work on finding a new definition… reinvent myself in a way that will make me feel confident again. I biked to work every day that I could this summer and I’ve taken up recreational sports again, although I haven’t gotten back to hockey just yet. But I’m hopeful. I’ve got a second chance at everything in my life, all because someone stepped up to do CPR on me.

• Learn how to do CPR in 90 seconds
• More on common heart conditions