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Woman Clinically Dead For 45 Minutes Miraculously Brought Back To Life: 'So Grateful God Gave Me Second Chance'

BALTIMORE (WJZ-TV) -- A Baltimore woman who suffered a heart attack that left her clinically dead for nearly an hour is calling it a medical miracle after being brought back to life.

July 2nd wasn't an ordinary day on the golf course for Kathy Patten. She got the call her daughter, Stacey Fifer, was in labor. But before meeting her newborn granddaughter, Patten had a heart attack. Moments later, she was gone. No heart rate, pulse, or oxygen.

Patten was considered clinically dead for 45 minutes -- and it all happened while her daughter was having trouble of her own. Baby Alora was stuck in the birth canal. This caused Fifer to need an emergency C-section after being in labor for 39 hours.

Meanwhile, intense CPR just rooms away from her brought the first miracle. "I'm so grateful God gave me a second chance. I'm just going to be the best person I can be," says Patten. "It's very scary, coming back is a second chance of life."

And then the second: a successful delivery.

"It was just fate that my Mom was supposed to be here. It was ultimately because of Alora that my Mom is here and happened to be at the right place at the right time," says Fifer. "She truly is a walking miracle."

Doctors were amazed and humbled by the experience, too.

"I don't say you're welcome, I say thank you," says Dr. Dov Frankel, one of Patten's doctors at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. "You taught us what it means to live. You taught us what it means not to give up."

Whether it be modern medicine or a higher power, there is something guiding this family for higher ground.

Both mother and baby are happy and healthy. This is Kathy's 8th grandchild.

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