Mum nearly dies after eating entire pack of Swiss rolls in her sleep
Ever since suffering postpartum anxiety following the birth of her daughter, mum-of-five Christian Owens has endured sporadic sleep-walking.
In the weeks that followed, however, what started off as wandering aimlessly through the night soon escalated to see the 41-year-old unknowingly munching her way through the contents of her kitchen until the early hours of the morning.
And six years ago, the US-born mum's inadvertent nighttime antics almost cost her her life, after she nearly chocked to death on one of her midnight snacks - a packet of Swiss rolls.
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All that the billing support specialist can recall from her almost-fatal experience was waking up the following day in the intensive care unit of her local hospital.
It was only until the following day that she was informed of the near-catastrophic events of the evening prior - as well as who had saved her life.
"The medication would make me sleepy and I'd wake up in the middle of the night and I wouldn't be aware that I was awake," she later told press.
"Sometimes I'd start eating. It was a weird side effect of the medication but apparently, it's pretty common."
Investigating authorities determined that Wisconsin-based Christian had travelled downstairs that fateful night and located a box of Swiss roles - all the while in the depths of a trance-like state.
Alarming, she went on to consume the whole punnet of sweet treats before drifting off back to sleep without having chewed the final few rolls properly.
Medics later found that Christian had inhaled a piece of cake in the night, which had lodged itself in her windpipe and was subsequently suffocating her.
"I inhaled them and it aspirated into my lungs and it caused my lungs to not be able to push out the carbon dioxide, like I was getting in oxygen but couldn't push out carbon dioxide," Christian explained.
"It's like it went down the wrong pipe. It went into my lungs instead of my stomach.
"I basically suffocated and it caused my heart to stop."
It wasn't until four hours later that she was discovered inside her bed, bearing blue lips and reportedly 'minutes away from death'.
It was Christian's grandmother and housemate Elida Owens who'd made the harrowing find in the early hours of the morning.
Thankfully, the 90-year-old had been trained in CPR - having worked as a nurse in her younger years - and immediately started her attempt to save Christian's life.
Despite being only 5' 8" tall and more than 7lb lighter than her granddaughter, Elida broke three of Christian's ribs, but was thankfully able to resuscitate her.
The sleep-walker spent the following two weeks in hospital, one of which was spent on life support.
Looking back, Christian is grateful that her grandmother woke earlier that she usually does, and can't thank her medical team enough for assisting in her recovery.
"I had a little bit of brain damage to my short term memory, so it made it hard to remember things and memorise things but other than that I made a full recovery," she gushed.
"I was so incredibly grateful. My grandparents basically raised me and my grandmother has always been my hero, but that took it to another level.
"I think the biggest thing people said online is that it was amazing that she was 84 and able to do that. My grandmother's a small woman and I'm not a small girl.
"The doctor chuckled too and he was like 'your grandmother went superhuman on you, she broke your ribs to save your life'.
"She's definitely my hero, that's for sure."
Topics: Health, US News, Parenting, Food and Drink, Sleep
Rhianna Benson