A YOUNG Cumbrian woman is encouraging people to learn CPR after she was saved by her boyfriend following a cardiac arrest in South Korea.

Becca Travis, who grew up in the village of Bothel, had a cardiac arrest whilst out running with her boyfriend in the country's capital Seoul back in June.

She was living in the country and working as a schoolteacher, when she decided to take up running.

Becca, 25, has ‘no memory’ from the day, and despite her partner saying she had looked ‘red all over her body’, she said she didn’t feel unwell, and just kept saying to her partner ‘there’s only five minutes left, I’ll be okay’.

The former Keswick School pupil said that a couple of minutes later she turned to her boyfriend and said ‘I can’t run anymore, I can’t do it’ before dropping ‘like a light switch’ towards the floor.

Luckily Becca’s partner caught her and noticed her eyes were rolling, before checking for a heartbeat which wasn’t there.

Becca said: “It was like I was dead at that point.

“Someone was on the phone to the emergency services, and they said you need to do CPR now. It was about three minutes before he started CPR.”

Thanks to her partner and an off-duty nurse doing CPR Becca made it, something she later found out was ‘the main reason why she is alive’ - with the ambulance taking another ten minutes to get to her.

Following the CPR, paramedics gave Becca shocks to her heart, with the second one bringing her heartbeat back. Following this she was taken to a nearby hospital and given further medical care for four days before being discharged.

She said: “I have no recollection of it (the cardiac arrest). I never felt any pain, so I was really confused as to what had happened to me.”

In September of this year Becca flew back to Suffolk, where her family now live, to start trying to recover from the incident with her family.

Tests have been done following the incident with no real reason being shown as to why Becca had the cardiac arrest, which has been incredibly hard for her to cope with.

She said: “I’ve got no real reason of why it happened to me other than it was a bit hot that day. So since then I have been really struggling with sleeping, thinking... am I just going to die in my sleep one night?”

On return to the UK, she was seen by a doctor who advised her to have a defibrillator fitted under the skin so she always had a ‘safety net’ should anything happen again.

The defibrillator was fitted last week, with Becca saying its instalment has made a ‘huge difference to her life’.

Following the incident, Becca has decided she wants something positive to come from her terrifying ordeal and is now encouraging people to learn CPR - something which she believes she would have been dead without.

She said: “I wouldn’t be here today if he didn’t do CPR quickly. So many people have died if they’ve had no CPR given.

“I have thought about how important CPR is since in terms of this... it could literally happen to - not just an elderly person - it could happen to anybody at any age.

"If everyone knew CPR so many lives could be saved.”