Family's campaign for CPR lessons in schools after 12-year-old daughter collapsed at their Lower Caldecote home

A family is campaigning for CPR lessons to be introduced in schools after battling to save their 12-year-old child after she collapsed at home.

Michelle and Shane Ashwell were having a normal family evening at their Lower Caldecote home on Monday last week. Daughter Alexis was putting away clothing in her room when Michelle heard what she described as “an awful scream”. Alexis, a pupil of Sandy Secondary school, staggered on to the landing before collapsing and starting to fit.

"It was the scariest time of my life,” said Michelle. “She couldn’t catch her breath.”

While Shane rang the emergency services, Michelle and her elder daughter Allyssa, 20, put Alexis in the recovery position and then took it in turns to follow advice from the ambulance call centre to carry out CPR. Allyssa’s boyfriend Robert, contacted his mum, paramedic Elizabeth Rigby, who came round to help before the police and emergency services arrived.

"I have MS and I’m normally rubbish at this sort of thing”, said Michelle. “But that was my baby and I just had to get it done.”

Alexis was taken to Addenbrookes hospital in cardiac arrest, with paramedics having to carry out defibrillation twice en route. She remains at the hospital while a bed is found for her at Great Ormond Street hospital where doctors hope to find out the cause of her collapse.

"The emergency services were amazing”, said Michelle. “They took us in a police car and helped to calm us down. It felt like a lifetime but she was at the hospital within 25 minutes. The staff at Addenbrooks are brilliant but they don’t know what caused it.”

The Luton Town fan, who shares her passion with her dad, has no memory of what happened and just wants to get back with her friends, said Michelle who with Shane has been staying with her at the hospital.

Michelle’s sister Kim O’Donnell, has now set up a petition calling for life saving CPR to be added to the secondary school curriculum.

"I’m totally in support of this,” said Michelle. “This should be taught in schools. Luckily Alexis was surrounded by people who could help her. I’ve never done anything like this before but I would never have stopped, that was my child!”

You can sign the petition here.