Doctor, Daughter, Milk Bring Woman “Back to Life”

Even from her hospital bed, Robin Stoner still gives glory to God.

“The good Lord above works in mysterious ways,” she said.

Stoner says she’s alive and well thanks to her own personal angels; her daughter and a doctor who happened to be at the right place at the right time.

“This was God’s will,” Stoner said. “Everything just fell into place exactly right.”

Stoner was shopping at a Newark, Delaware ShopRite on Saturday when she suddenly fell to the ground in cardiac arrest. Her daughter, Amanda Wooters, began performing CPR when another person, who just happened to be at the ShopRite, came to the aide. That person was Dr. Lionel Malebranche of the Christiana Care Health System and one of the area’s top doctors.

Malebranche was actually on his way out minutes before Stoner collapsed. But as he was about to check out, he remembered he had to buy a gallon of milk. As he went to retrieve it, he noticed Stoner and her daughter.

Clinical death occurs when the heart stops beating in a regular rhythm. Both Wooters and Malebranche believe Stoner was "clinically gone" for a few moments.

“Her whole body went completely limp,” Wooters said. “She stopped breathing. She was gone.”

“She had no pulse and was not breathing,” Malebranche said.

Malebranche and Wooters both performed CPR on Stoner on the floor of the store and eventually brought Stoner “back from the dead.” She awakened and was taken to the hospital where she continues to recover.

“It’s a day I will never forget,” Malebranche said. "It will mark me for the rest of my life.”

While speaking with Malebranche and her daughter, Stoner was in good spirits, even joking about the gallon of milk that helped save her life.

“Milk does the body good!” she said. “How about that?!”

But while Stoner can now laugh, she knows things could have been very different if not for her daughter and the doctor.

“They’re absolutely my angels,” she said. “If it wasn’t for them together, one piece without the other, I probably wouldn’t be here today.”
 

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