Hi I’m Mark Hobbs I would really love if we could all use this platform and get together as a team to raise as much money as possible between all of us and buy as many defibrillators and provide as many CPR courses as possible, because these save lives! Just think, what if it was someone we knew or even our own life, you would definitely want to help then, so don’t think about it just do it donate now, I know how important these two things are as they saved my life!

By performing CPR and using a defibrillator, you’ll give someone the best possible chance of survival, but there isn’t always a defibrillator close enough to help save the life of someone having a cardiac arrest.

Why do we need more defibrillators?

To help someone who is in cardiac arrest effectively, a defibrillator needs to be found as quickly as possible. For every minute it takes for the defibrillator to reach someone and deliver a shock, their chances of survival is drastically reduced.

help provide life saving equipment and CPR knowledge and give back as one day you might be as grateful as my friends and family for having someone you care about still in your life!

Read my story and you will understand why a combination of CPR and a defibrillator are so important and could save one of your family or a friends life, these two things saves lives, help save a life!

I had a massive cardiac arrest and died for 20 minutes. It was the luckiest week of my life.

I was sparring Martial arts at the time. The first perfect thing was that I was in top position on my partner which meant I could say stop, and this allowed my training partner, Richard to see that there was something drastically wrong with the situation as I collapsed and died, for me this was the start of a perfect week!

Apparently I didn’t have a heart attack as the heart itself is healthy. I was exercising at a high intensity and blockages in my arteries prevented the blood from flowing to my heart, so it literally just stopped.

It seems that these blocked arteries had been an underlying condition for about 10 years, so it was inevitable that something serious was going to happen - less about if, more about where and when. And it happened in the perfect place at the perfect time.

I was in my gym where my students could take control and do CPR straight away. This saved my life and kept blood flowing to my brain for the 20 minutes I was dead. Without that, I would now have brain damage.

Unfortunately two of my kids had to witness their Dad dead, which isn’t ideal to say the least … but hopefully this negative can be changed to a positive for them in the future, as the outcome was good.

The air ambulance arrived and restarted my heart after 20 minutes. I was actually dead for 20 minutes. That’s a long time.

The medics put me into an induced coma and took me to Brighton hospital. They brought me out of the coma after about 12 hours. At that point they were extremely worried about brain damage and other damage to the heart etc, and it was obviously was a worrying time for all my family and friends. However, there was no damage and I retained all my faculties. I was extremely lucky as the odds were only 5% that I would be ok, and beating these odds was down to the perfect CPR from guys at the gym that kept the blood pumping around my brain. Again, what a perfect outcome!

I was kept at Brighton hospital for a week before my surgery.

While at the hospital I decided to give Tom my student his Jiu Jitsu black belt I have been meaning to do this for a long time and I was all too aware that, though I'd beaten the first lot of odds, there was a lot more to come with the surgery, and I wanted to make sure that, if my luck didn’t hold, Tom was awarded what he deserved for all his years of dedication. Clearly, even in the most dire situation, Martial Arts and my team is at the top of my mind!

I had the quadruple by-pass surgery, three of my arteries were fully blocked and one artery was partially blocked. I have been working on limited blood flow for a very long time so no wonder everything always seemed hard! But I just cracked on!

The surgery went perfectly and all my organs recovered full function. More importantly, I now have four squeaky clean arteries to supply blood to my heart again. Perfect! I’m really looking forward to getting these working and seeing the difference in how I feel.

I have also been told by the doctors that, once I recover, I will be better than ever, as I was working out and living on limited blood flow to my heart. Now I have four fully functioning arteries and I can only imagine what I'll be capable of, I’m a very lucky guy!

I can honestly say that the biggest lesson I have had from this is that you should do what you enjoy in life, and what I enjoy is Martial Arts. But in the process of doing what you love, remember that friends and family are more important than our own selfish desires, as when you need them they are the ones there to help, and help in abundance. This is what really stands out for me. All my friends and family have risen up and taken control and made sure everything will be ok, not for themselves but for me. That means so much and makes me such a lucky guy. Being a selfish person only gets you so far, as the day will come when you need your family and friends.

This is why being in a family and a team for me is the most important thing in life. It's about being an individual with the strength of your team backing you, and the strength of the team will get stronger the more each individual puts back into the team, so the individual and team grow with each other through the years. It’s about doing what you enjoy while having good people around you. I am so lucky to have witnessed this exceptional human quality and I will be forever thankful to all these lifetime friends.

I’m now looking forward to a long and healthy life, which so easily could have ended. I didn’t smoke or drink, my diet was ok and I exercised, so maybe the cause of the underlying condition was hereditary. No one really knows, but as the doctors said, this had probably been going on for ten years and though it didn’t happen earlier because my body was otherwise fit and healthy, it was a ticking time bomb. So, given it was going to happen, everything about how and where it did actually happen was perfect, and now I can have an even better life as everything now works.

There is no point on dwelling on what you can’t change, or asking stupid questions like, 'Why me?’ That leads nowhere. So don’t tell me you're sorry for what has happened to me. If you look at everything, hopefully now you can understand what I mean when I say it’s been perfect. It really was the luckiest week of my life. What are the odds? I won the lotto and have another chance at living.

help provide life saving equipment and CPR knowledge and give back as one day you might be as grateful as my friends and family for having someone you care about still in your life!