On Aug. 6 her son Adam was hanging out with friends at Tim Hortons. It was like any other night.

Around 10 p.m. Adam started to feel dizzy. His heart was racing.

The 18-year-old sat down in his truck and suddenly collapsed.

Luckily his brother Scott was there to catch him.

Adam had no pulse.

Scott and friend Tom Peazel administered CPR. His heart started beating. It was weak.

By the time paramedics arrived, it had stopped again.

He was shocked, loaded into the ambulance and rushed to Port Colborne General Hospital.

When Heather arrived at the hospital to meet her son, he was blue. It's a sight she can't shake.

"It was a horrible, horrible day," said Heather, from Hamilton General Hospital, where Adam is recovering. "You never expect to have to go through that with your child. You expect it with an older person but not your child."

It took more than an hour to stabilize Adam. Heather said the staff at Port Colborne General saved Adam.

Once he was finally ready to be transported, air ambulance arrived and transported the 18-year-old to Hamilton General at 1 a.m.

Adam has Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome, which occurs when the heart has an extra conduction pathway. When there is an extra pathway the electrical signal may arrive at the ventricles too soon. Many people don't know they have the syndrome until they have an attack, like Adam. There is a small risk of sudden death associated with the illness.

Heather and her husband Dan had no idea their son had an extra pathway in his heart. There was no way of knowing.

"He's a perfectly healthy 18-year-old boy," she said. "This was all so sudden."

On Tuesday, Adam received a catheter ablation. A catheter is guided into the problem area, then the tissue is destroyed with radio frequency energy, stopping the electrical pathway.

With the surgery out of the way Adam is on the path to recovery. Heather expects him home next week.

Due to the quick response time, Adam didn't suffer any brain damage.

He has a bit of short term memory loss, said Heather, but each day he is improving. Doctors are hopeful he will gain full control of his short term memory, she added.

"He has his youth on his side," she said. "He is our miracle child, he's not supposed to be here."

If it weren't for the emergency department at Port Colborne General, Adam might not be here, said a distraught Heather.

A restructuring plan released by the Niagara Health System July 17 calls for the closure of Port Colborne General Hospital's emergency department among other service cuts. If approved, 24-hour emergency services will be cut to 14-hour prompt care before being eliminated outright.

The plan was ordered by the Local Health Integration Network after the NHS filed a $17.9 million deficit in 2007. The plan aims to have NHS out of the red by 2013.

"If he had to go to Welland he wouldn't have made it," Heather said wiping a tear from her eye. "I wouldn't be (by my son's side) right now, I'd be planning a funeral."

Many residents in Port Colborne and Wainfleet concur with Sherk's belief, there will be a higher mortality rate if emergency is taken away from the hospital.

That may not be the case, says the health system's director of emergency services.

"Most EMS staff are trained on a number of different resuscitation methods," said Pat Morka, health program director for emergency services with the NHS. "They have all kinds of cardiac support."

She said some paramedics are now delivering the care that was once only available in an ER.

Kevin Smith, associate director of Niagara Emergency Medical Services, said it's a tough call whether or not the longer distance will effect survival rates. He said advanced paramedics are able to provide the same level of care that cardiac patients will receive in an emergency department including electric shock, medication and intubation. He said it would depend on the outcome of paramedic treatment.

"It's difficult to speculate if transportation times will make a difference," said Smith. "It would depend on how the patient responds to initial treatment."

Morka was unable to speak on a specific case, like that of Adam Sherk, but said that 95 per cent of visits to Port Colborne General's emergency room are non-urgent. Over the course of a night shift, Morka said PCGH sees an average of one patient per hour, and of those patients, one is urgent.

"We're looking at this with a quality of care perspective," said Morka. "It's more common to see very emergent cases at the larger sites. While the smaller sites do see some urgent cases, and are capable of caring for them, the larger sites are the ones that are seeing more urgent cases.

"And when looking at quality of care, there will be more appropriate staff at those sites."

The prompt care centre that will replace Port Colborne General's 24-hour emergency department, will operate from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. After 10 p.m. patients will have to seek care in Welland, including ambulances.

Morka said there won't be any changes to service in Port Colborne until a number of services are in place.