NEED TO KNOW
- Merryl Hoffman was walking down the street when she suffered sudden cardiac arrest and collapsed
- Two nurses, Sabrina Castle and Gianna Formisano, were on their way to work when they came across the medical emergency and stepped in to perform CPR until the ambulance arrived
- Hoffman said that without the pair, “there was no doubt I would have died”
A New York woman is praising two nurses for saving her life during a cardiac arrest after they were in the right place at the right time.
Merryl Hoffman, a 63-year-old attorney, had always maintained a healthy and active lifestyle. In her 40s, she was diagnosed with a leaky mitral valve. She underwent surgery to repair it and in every annual checkup with her cardiologist since, her reports have been clear.
However, Hoffman nearly died while on her way to work in October 2024 when she suddenly collapsed. She was experiencing sudden cardiac arrest and her heart stopped beating, CBS News reports.
Cardiac arrest — also known as sudden cardiac arrest — is the abrupt loss of heart function, resulting from a problem with the heart’s electrical system, according to the Mayo Clinic. This disrupts the heart’s pumping action and stops blood flow through the body.
When Hoffman collapsed, she happened to be right outside of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Two Memorial Sloan Kettering nurses, Sabrina Castle and Gianna Formisano, were on their way to work when they came across Hoffman during her medical emergency.
“We were so shocked. When we were walking up, people were like ‘Nurses, nurses!’ We didn’t know what we were walking into,” Formisano told the outlet. “People were grabbing our coffee, taking our bags. It was out of a movie, the way that they were like ‘Oh, thank God you’re here.'”
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Gianna Formisano
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Hoffman didn’t have a pulse so Castle and Formisano performed CPR while telling bystanders to call for an ambulance.
Five minutes later — which Formisano said “felt like forever” — the ambulance arrived and took Hoffman to NewYork-Presbyterian’s cardiac care unit. Castle and Formisano ultimately went off to work. During their break, they called the hospital to check in on her status.
“She was like, ‘You got her back. She’s intubated, she’s alive, you saved her life,'” Castle recalled the nurse telling them.
Hoffman explained that she was unconscious for five days after collapsing. She underwent emergency surgery — where her heart stopped for several minutes — but was able to pull through due to the life-saving actions of the two nurses who performed CPR.
“Without them, I was told, there was no doubt I would have died or been brain dead,” she told the outlet. “They absolutely saved my life.”
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Cardiac arrest can be fatal if proper steps aren’t taken immediately. CPR can improve the chances of survival until emergency medical assistance arrives. More than 350,000 cardiac arrests occur outside a hospital in the United States each year, according to the American Heart Association.
A person suffering a cardiac arrest can experience immediate and drastic symptoms like sudden collapse, no pulse, no breathing, and a loss of consciousness. Warning signs can include chest discomfort, shortness of breath, weakness and a heart palpitations.
Hoffman now has an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator in her chest to prevent future cardiac arrests. It works by shocking the heart if an irregular heartbeat is detected. She also had cardiac rehabilitation before returning to work.
The attorney later reconnected with the nurses who helped save her life, even going out to dinner to express her appreciation. In a full-circle moment, Castle and Formisano even recently passed Hoffman on the same block where she had collapsed.
“We were like, ‘Wow, this is really crazy,'” Formisano said. “We’re running into you on the same spot, on our way to work, but now you’re alive and well and in a much different state than when we met you the first time.”
