York mum-of-three Amy Miller is back home and waiting to see if she needs a heart transplant after an extraordinary recovery from her second heart attack in eight years.

Amy, 33, was three minutes from death last March when her heart stopped beating, but was saved when her father Peter unexpectedly returned home from visiting a friend to collect his bank card.

Peter, 57, shocked his daughter’s heart with an inbuilt defibrillator, and carried out chest compressions.

Amy, who was born with a congenital heart defect, spent six weeks in York Hospital but has now returned to her parents’ home in Wilton Rise, Holgate.

Amy, mum to 13-year-old Jess, Louise, ten, and Charlie, four, is now waiting to hear if she requires a transplant.

But she says she would not be alive today if her father had not forgotten his bank card and been forced to return home.

“If he hadn’t come back I wouldn’t be here,” she revealed.

“He was going to his friend’s and would’ve been gone all day, but he forgot his card.

“My mum was there but she was too stressed, then my brother and sister-in-law helped me while I was being sick. I’m really thankful he came back.”

Doctors believe the heart attack was caused by a bout of pneumonia she had been suffering at the time, but it could take up to 12 months for specialists to determine if she requires a transplant.

Health service statistics show only two in three people survive the first year of having a transplant, but Amy admits she is trying to put that to the back of her mind and maintain as normal a life as possible.

“I try not to think about it really because I get upset,” she added.

The Press ran its Lifesavers campaign in 2010 to encourage people to donate their organs and raise awareness of how donations can help those who are desperately ill. In 2013, we revealed the number of people donating organs after death in Yorkshire had increased by 32 per cent in five years.

To join the Organ Donor Register or get more information, phone 0300 1232323, visit organdonation.nhs.uk