From holiday to a 5-day coma: Tania’s fight for life after sudden heart crisis

Published: 13 February 2026

Tania thought she was setting off on a wellearned holiday when she boarded a flight to Australia last November. Instead, the fit, musicloving grandmother from the Bay of Plenty ended up in intensive care, in a coma and fighting for her life.

What began as a trip to visit her sister in Melbourne turned into a terrifying ordeal involving heart failure, atrial fibrillation, and multiple organ failure.

Nothing in Tania’s medical history hinted at serious heart trouble. But on the morning of her flight, subtle warning signs began to appear.

At the airport, Tania suddenly felt overwhelmingly hot and unwell. Hoping it was just stress, she headed for the bathroom.

“I didn’t cool down. I just got hotter and hotter,” she says. “I stripped off everything and sat there for 20 minutes before splashing water on my face.”

She pushed through and boarded the flight, but when she finally hugged her sister after landing, she stumbled.

“I fell into her, and she went, ‘Oh, are you okay?’ I thought I was just a bit tired.”

Rapid decline and frightening experience in A&E

Over the following three days, Tania’s condition deteriorated rapidly. She became extremely tired, breathless, constantly thirsty, and barely able to speak.

“I was extremely lethargic and just wanted to curl up into a ball. I couldn’t even walk. By the time I got to A&E I had no energy to talk. I couldn’t even think.”

Staff rushed her into a wheelchair and onto an examination bed. What followed was the start of a terrifying ordeal.

Tests showed Tania was in atrial fibrillation – an irregular, often fast heartbeat and her heart needed to be shocked back into a normal rhythm.

“I remember the feeling. It was almost like my heart was going to choke me,” she says. “It was just intense and hot, and I was stressed because that’s not what I expected to happen when I was going to A&E.”

Doctors needed to perform an electrical cardioversion to reset her heart, but the medication to help Tania knocked her around.

“I thought I’m on a roller coaster here, and I’m really stressed. I think I thought I was dying. I felt completely out of control.”

Five days in a coma, heart failure and multiple organ failure

Doctors placed Tania in a medically induced coma. After three days she was transferred to another hospital and remained in intensive care for a total of five days.

When she finally woke, the news was confronting. On top of atrial fibrillation, she had developed heart failure and suffered multiple organ failure.

“It took me a while to talk. I was really slow, and nothing was making sense,” she recalls. “I couldn’t move. I couldn’t walk. I don’t even know why that was. I was not expecting to be told I had heart failure.”

During the coma, her kidneys and liver had failed due to cardiogenic shock, where the heart can’t pump enough blood to vital organs. In that brief window, she lost 14 kilograms.

“I was terrified. I thought I wouldn’t make it out alive. I couldn’t understand things. I still thought I was going to die,” she says. 

“I thought after everything I’ve gone through, I wouldn’t make it out of this. Especially when the cardiologist said, ‘Your heart is really bad’.”

Recovery and living with a heart condition

After 10 days in hospital and a month recovering, Tania flew home before Christmas. Life now looks very different. She takes daily medication and has a CRT-D device implanted – a defibrillator and pacemaker combined to keep her heart steady.

One of the hardest parts of living with heart failure has been the psychological toll. 

“It consumed me at first. It was always there with me. It’s all everybody was talking about. I lived and breathed it for months, but now I can go days without thinking about it,” she says.

Adjusting to taking regular medicines has also been a major shift for someone who barely thought about her health before her trip. Everyday activities have changed too.

“I can’t ride my bike as fast as I used to,” she says. “I’ve got a dog and I can’t run with her. Now I have to walk her. If anything, she walks me because she’s naughty,” she laughs.

Tania shares her story as part of the Big Heart Appeal which takes place in February 2026, in the hope that New Zealanders will continue supporting the heart research that saves lives every day.