A GREAT-grandmother who came back from the dead has described hearing medics say her heart had stopped.

Former Lord Mayor of Oxford Carole Roberts was being taken to hospital in an ambulance when she ‘flatlined’ twice.

The 69-year-old, who had suffered a massive heart attack after returning home from a family meal, said: “I was thinking – if I am dead, how come I can still hear?”

Mrs Roberts, of Clematis Place, Blackbird Leys, had gone down with what she thought was a severe case of food poisoning when things took a turn for the worse.

She said: “I got home and started feeling funny.Then I was sick.

“I thought it was food poisoning as I was sick and had diarrhoea. I had no chest pain.

“Then my left arm started to hurt and I couldn’t breathe.

“If my children Tina and Tony hadn’t been there I would have been dead.”

Minutes later Mrs Roberts, who has nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, was being driven to Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital.

On the way her heart stopped twice.

Mrs Roberts, who lost her husband Jimmy to a heart attack five years ago when he was 80, said: “In the ambulance I flatlined twice.”

She distinctly remembers hearing that her heart had stopped.

Mrs Roberts, a Labour city councillor for more than 20 years, has now returned to her role as director of the Rose Hill and Donnington Advice Centre in Ashhurst Way.

She is on the road to recovery and wants to thank the paramedics and hospital staff who saved her life on April 10.

Mrs Roberts, who also lost her son Bryan, 43, to a heart attack nine years ago, has now agreed to take part in heart attack research at the hospital as a way of saying thank you.

She said: “It saved me, so maybe it will save others.”

Of the paramedics and hospital staff, she added: “They were just fantastic.”

Ambulance technician Darren Bloy, one of those who attended, said: “I recall the lady had just been to dinner with her daughter and upon her return home experienced diarrhoea and vomiting.

“Then she had a massive heart attack.

“Myself and my colleagues provided emergency medical care to her at home and continued this en route to the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford.

“We are all delighted that she would appear to have made an excellent recovery, and we are all wishing her well for the future.”