Doctors feared the worst when a viral infection attacked Julie's heart and she then had to be hooked up to an artificial heart. 

She had been feeling ill and suffering chest pains and breathlessness but thought it was just flu.  However, hospital tests revealed something much more sinister. 

A common cold virus had spread to her heart and was causing it to swell.  She was then rushed to a specialist cardiac unit for emergency surgery. 

Julie says: "The doctors said to my parents that I probably wouldn't survive the ambulance journey." 

By the time she reached the cardiac unit her heart had already stopped.  The surgeon woke all his operating team in the middle of the night to help him to fit the artificial heart, allowing Julie's real heart to recover. 

Julie didn't have a pulse for THREE DAYS - which earned her a place in the Guinness Book of Records.  She was training to be a teacher but took a year out to recover and never went back. 

She says: "I didn't think I could take the stress.  I'd been given a second chance and didn't want to take any risks." 

She is now pursuing her dream to appear in a West End show and does voluntary work for Cardiac Risk in The Young (CRY).