A Terang ambulance crew was at her door within about five minutes of the service being contacted, followed soon after by another from Camperdown and a mobile intensive care ambulance (MICA) from Warrnambool.

That quick response saved her life and she remains grateful that it has enabled her to continue to be a mother to her three young girls and a wife to her husband Jason.

She told her story to The Standard this week to balance the publicity about delays in getting ambulances to transport two jockeys injured in a jumps race at Warrnambool on Monday. 

The jockeys were treated at the scene by private ambulance staff, who were not allowed to leave the racecourse while the race meeting was under way.

Ambulance Victoria vehicles were delayed in attending because two Warrnambool ambulances were on other call-outs.

One jockey was later taken to hospital by a Terang ambulance and the other by a private ambulance contractor.

Mrs Faulkner, 38, said the response by emergency services to her cardiac arrest in April was not only quick, it was extensive.

As well as the three ambulances, her husband’s triple-0 call also brought an off-duty community ambulance officer and two police units, one from Cobden and the other from Port Campbell.

The first ambulance officer to treat Ms Faulkner, Mick Hoyer, said her heart had gone into ventricular fibrillation, which means its rhythm was unco-ordinated, and he used a defibrillator to shock it back into a co-ordinated rhythm.

Ms Faulkner was flown by air ambulance to the The Alfred hospital in Melbourne where she spent nine days and was fitted with a defibrillator near her heart to protect against any further cardiac arrests.

Mrs Faulkner thanked not only the emergency services for their quick and effective response but also the Terang community that had given her family great support since the incident.