A husband's quick-thinking actions on a busy motorway hard shoulder brought his wife back from the brink of death after she suffered a sudden cardiac arrest during a family journey.
Emergency Stop on the M56
Paul Cutler, 64, was driving home to Dartford with his wife Suzanne, 57, and their daughter Annie after a family celebration when he glanced across and noticed his wife had become completely lifeless in the passenger seat. The retired salesman immediately performed an emergency stop on the M56 just outside Manchester, pulling onto the hard shoulder during what would become a race against time to save Suzanne's life.
Roadside Resuscitation
Paul pulled his wife from the vehicle onto a grass verge beside the motorway and began administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Their daughter Annie, 20, simultaneously dialled 999 to request emergency ambulance assistance as traffic continued to hammer past their vulnerable position on the roadside.
"It all happened so fast," recalled Paul, who serves as a councillor and former mayor in Dartford. "I'd seen how it was done on television and just kept going. Traffic was hammering past, and the air ambulance landed in a field nearby. Annie and I both thought we had lost her. Looking back, it was horrific."
Paramedics Take Over
When paramedics arrived at the scene, they took over the resuscitation efforts using a defibrillator on the roadside. After multiple attempts, medical professionals successfully restored Suzanne's pulse. Annie accompanied her mother in the ambulance as it was blue-lighted to Wythenshawe Hospital in Greater Manchester, which houses a specialist cardiac unit.
Paul followed in an ambulance support vehicle to be with his wife, who was immediately rushed to the resuscitation room upon arrival before being transferred to intensive care and placed in an induced coma. Suzanne, a mother of four and grandmother, stabilised overnight but would remain hospitalised for 25 days before being discharged just one week before Christmas.
Medical Background and Recovery
The cardiac arrest came as a particular shock as Suzanne had undergone successful breast cancer surgery five years earlier and had been taking targeted therapy medication to prevent further cancerous cell formation. This treatment had previously caused a rare side effect affecting her heart, resulting in a hospitalisation for pneumonia in 2021 that required five months of recovery from her job at an accountancy firm.
Paul explained that doctors were amazed by Suzanne's recovery from the near-death situation, describing him as "the man who saved his wife" and confirming she would not have survived without his immediate CPR intervention. Suzanne has since had an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator fitted to monitor her heart rhythm and prevent future sudden cardiac arrests.
Campaign for Awareness and Equipment
Following the traumatic experience, Paul has become committed to raising awareness about the importance of CPR training and increasing access to life-saving equipment like defibrillators in schools and colleges across the country. Having worked most of his career in corporate sales before taking on part-time teaching prior to retirement, he has contacted former colleagues to initiate an awareness campaign.
"I want to get the ball rolling and reach out to as many people as possible," said Paul, who emphasised that approximately 270 children die annually in the UK from sudden cardiac arrest. "Every minute makes a massive difference as every minute the chances of survival fall to the floor. We were so close to losing her. It would have torn our family apart."
The Moment of Hope
Perhaps the most telling moment in Suzanne's recovery came when she complained to a nurse about her aching ribs - cracked during Paul's vigorous CPR efforts on the motorway hard shoulder. "When she moaned to the nurse that her ribs were aching because of the cracked ribs I had given her while doing CPR," Paul recalled with relief, "I knew she was on the mend."
The family had been returning from celebrating their grandson's third birthday party in the Wirral when the emergency occurred. Paul stayed with their daughter in the area while Suzanne recovered, researching cardiac arrest survival statistics that reinforced how crucial his immediate response had been to saving his wife's life.
