Woman survives 45 minutes without heartbeat after amniotic embolism after birth

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Ruby Graupera-Cassimiro had gone 45 minutes without a pulse when doctors called her family into the operating room and told them there was nothing more they could do. A team of more than a dozen doctors and nurses had been working desperately to revive her. But now they'd lost hope that the 40-year-old Deerfield Beach woman, whose heart had given out without warning after a routine C-section at Boca Raton Regional Hospital, was going to make it. Devastated, Graupera-Cassimiro's husband, mother and sister said goodbye to her just hours after they'd welcomed a healthy baby girl. The medical team stopped all lifesaving procedures. They watched a heart monitor, preparing to record a time of death. And then the impossible happened: A blip of a heartbeat showed up. Then another, and another. Within a few hours, Graupera-Cassimiro, a human resources manager and now a mother of two, was tugging at the breathing tube on her face and scribbling notes to family.

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