Heartfelt thanks to life-saving nurse

Wyatt Hancock remembers nothing about the day he went into cardiac arrest at school and died for 20 minutes.

Nor does the Bunbury Catholic College student have any recollection of the next four days, when he was in an induced coma at Perth's Fiona Stanley Hospital.

"I don't remember going to school or anything about that day at school," he said.

"When I woke up, I wasn't really stressed and I wanted to hop up and move around, and asked a few times to know what happened."

What happened was a cardiac arrest during a maths class where Wyatt, who had no previous medical conditions, needed six minutes of cardiopulmonary resuscitation from nurse Miranda McKee to save his life.

"It was the first day of term and I got a message that a student had collapsed," Ms McKee said.

"I came across an unconscious student showing no signs of life and I started CPR immediately."

The day's events posed several challenges to Ms McKee.

While the CPR helped restore some of Wyatt's colour, the situation turned once the cardiac compressions stopped, forcing Ms McKee to continue until paramedics arrived.

She said that not knowing whether the student would survive once he left the school was a challenge made greater by the fact that she also knew Wyatt's mother.

Wyatt has made a full recovery from the incident on the first day of term two in April and said "not much has changed" as a result.

He lost 10kg while in an induced coma and spent nearly three weeks in hospital, plus another week away from school. And while Wyatt now has a defibrillator, his father Bruce Hancock said they were told the likelihood of a recurrence was the same as being struck by lightning.

Mr Hancock described the recovery as a "reboot" of Wyatt's brain, with the avid chess player having to re-learn how to set up a board.

He credited the school's quick medical response for his son still being alive.

"The fact he had a full and quick recovery was testament to the expediency of the first aid he got," Mr Hancock said.