A WOMAN who died for eight minutes after suffering a cardiac arrest at a school in Poole has thanked the people who saved her life.

Monika Quine, 54, fell ill during a staff training day at St Edward’s School in Poole, where she works as a receptionist, on September 4 of last year.

She said: "Everyday I pinch myself. I can't believe I am still here."

While sitting down to lunch with colleagues, Monika said she “dropped down” before her colleagues sprung into action and performed CPR.

She said: “It was amazing, it was like the whole school knew what to do.

"Everyone went into action.

"We have a brilliant first aid team and the two girls doing first aid on that day, Elodie Roux and Lucy Mitchell.

"Elodie started CPR on me straight away, she realised I wasn’t breathing and then, bless her, she was exhausted and Lucy took over.

“A colleague of mine said to me it was probably the best team-building experience but also the worst."

Colleagues cracked Monika's sternum in their efforts to save her.

"They were working on me, I was physically dead," she said.

"They were thinking, 'You are not going anywhere'."

Air ambulance staff and paramedics used a defibrillator to shock Monika's heart and she was flown to Southampton Hospital, where she spent three-and-a-half weeks in the cardiac intensive care unit.

She now has a implantable cardioverter defibrillator with a pacemaker inside.

“I knew my mother had a stent and my father had a pacemaker, but I found out that my German great-grandmother died at 47 from a cardiac arrest," she said,

“I’ve since then found out that I’ve actually got a heart defect that I didn’t know about.”

The school was already in the process of getting its own defibrillator and now has one in the sports hall.

Monika said: “Because of the exemplary care from my colleagues, they kept my going until the ambulance arrived.

"Although it must have been horrendously traumatic for them, I literally went blue and I wasn’t breathing and all your emotions come into gear and they just went for it.”

Monika attended St Edward's School as a child. Her son and daughter also attended.

"I think CPR should be in the curriculum. It would save so many people's lives and so many people out there are walking around not realising that they could have a heart problem," she said.

"Life is so precious."