Jane felt perfectly fine. When she did a simple health check, she needed to call an ambulance.

Jane was just messing around when it happened.

Her husband, who suffers from long COVID, checks his blood pressure regularly. Jane was fiddling around with his heart monitor and decided to try it for herself.

Placing it on her index finger, the 62-year-old looked at the number on the screen and raised her eyebrows.

"I asked my husband, 'What is your heartbeat usually going at?'" Jane recounted to Mamamia.

"Around the 70s," he said, referring to 70 beats per minute (BPM). "I've got to make sure I don't go past the 90s."

A normal resting heart rate for adults is typically between 60 and 100 beats per minute.

"I'm 22 BPM," Jane said.

"What? It can't be!" came her husband's shocked reply, before marching over to look for himself. 

But there it was, clear as day on the screen. Twenty-two beats per minute.

Watch: Mum-of-three waiting for a heart transplant. Post continues after video.

Quickly, Jane's husband called the COVID hotline and explained the situation.

"Yeah, she seems to be fine," he told the person on the other end, before passing the phone to Jane.

When instructed to test the monitor again, Jane placed the contraption back on her finger.

"It started off at about 60BPM, and then it started going down, and down, and down, and down, until it hit 24BPM," she recalled.

The hotline worker sprung into action.

"Hold the line, I'm getting an ambulance to come around," she said.

That's how Jane found herself in an ambulance being whisked off to the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.

The scene around her was chaos. Paramedics bustled around her, checking her vitals and firing off questions. Meanwhile, Jane felt in perfect health.

"The guy in the ambulance was sort of triaging me before they drove off," she remembered.

"Have you got tightness in the chest?" the paramedic asked Jane.

"No," she replied.

"Breathlessness?"

"No."

"Headache?"

"No"

"Vagueness?"

"No."

At the hospital, confused medical staff wired Jane up and began performing tests. 

"I was there for about six hours so they could see what was really happening," Jane said. "I was completely asymptomatic, feeling fine."

While waiting for the results, Jane took in the scene around her.

"There was a lady across from me. I thought, 'Geez, she's not looking very well at all'. I noticed that people were coming in to see her two at a time."

At that moment, the 62-year-old realised they were loved ones coming to say goodbye.

As the gravity of her situation began to sink in, a "big wash of gratitude" fell over Jane. Cycling through nightmare 'what if' scenarios in her mind, she broke down in tears.

"What if this wasn't picked up? What if your heart stopped? What if that happened in front of your daughter, Lucy?" Jane recalled thinking.

Quickly, she realised she had to make a change. She had been working herself to death, and needed to slow down.

"It's not really logical that it was the stress and the overwork that got me to that state, because you would think that would lead to high blood pressure and a fast heart rate. But, that was the wake-up call," Jane said.

"I thought, 'No, it's no good. I've got a 23-year-old daughter. I've got to get control of this to make sure I don't drop dead in front of her.'"

Six hours later, Jane got some answers. The 62-year-old had bradycardia and bigeminy.

Bradycardia is a heart condition where the heart beats slower than normal, and bigeminy is a heart rhythm pattern where a premature beat follows each normal heartbeat.

"I don't feel it at all," said Jane of the conditions. "But sometimes I put that little thing on my finger to see if it's happening."

Today, Jane still thinks about the woman across from her in hospital.

"It was one of those blinding moments of insight where I go, 'Oh my God, here I am having the first day of the rest of my life, and she's probably having the last day of hers," Jane said.

She hasn't taken a single day for granted since.

Jane is an author and publishing mentor. You can check her out here.

Feature Image: Supplied.