A mother of three and fitness fanatic had no underlying health issues before suffering three rare heart attacks in five days, leaving her pleading with doctors to save her life for her kids.

Last month, Kayla Scali, 36, spent the day doing work around the house before heading to the gym after dinner.

After her regular workout she began to experience sudden heart palpitations, chest tightness and numbness down her left arm.

“I rang my husband and said, ‘I just don’t feel right. I think I actually need an ambulance’,” she said.

“Next minute, I was on the floor in the foetal position. Luckily, an intern doctor had turned up to train and found me on the floor and called the ambulance.”

It was the first of three heart attacks she would suffer, triggered by a rare condition called spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD).

Olympian medallist and retired swimmer Libby Trickett began raising awareness for the condition after her SCAD heart attack in June last year, two months after giving birth to her fifth child.

The condition occurs when a sudden tear forms in the wall of a heart artery, slowing or blocking blood flow and leading to heart attacks, irregular heartbeats or sudden death.

The main cause is unknown but experts say it often affects younger, otherwise healthy women, and can be triggered by pregnancy, childbirth, extreme stress, genetic or artery conditions.

Ms Scali suffered a second attack in hospital, the day before she was discharged.

Her ECG results showed abnormalities but she was never reviewed by a specialist.

“I didn’t feel medically well enough to leave, but I trusted the advice at the time and thought maybe it was just part of recovery,” she said.

Within 20 minutes of leaving the hospital, Ms Scali began experiencing symptoms of her third near-fatal heart attack.

“We followed the (medication) instructions and waited five minutes, but by that point I was in absolute excruciating pain, worse than my first heart attack,” she said.

“I said, ‘pull into the servo, you need to call me an ambulance’ … I didn’t think I was going to make it.”

By the time she reached emergency, Ms Scali was screaming in unbearable pain – a state her husband Ilario Scali, 40, described as worse than her third labour.

But her only concern was going back home to her husband and three children, Savannah, 18, Ariana, 2 and five-month-old Enzo.

“Before I entered the (surgery) room, I said, ‘you need to get me home to my children. I can’t die today’,” she said.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about my family. I was bawling my eyes out and saying, please, my kids need their mum.”

It took seven specialists four and a half hours in surgery to save her life, including consultation with a surgeon in Tokyo during the procedure.

Now in recovery, Ms Scali’s heart only functions at 45 per cent making tasks such as exercising, cleaning, driving or socialising more difficult.

“The hardest part has been not being able to hold my kids, pick them up properly (or) getting up at night to feed my son … there’s a lot of mum guilt.”

She said her husband took around seven weeks off work to care for the family.

“As a dad, he’s had the pressure of stepping up, looking after the kids, driving me to appointments and managing everything at home,” she said.

Ms Scali said there wasn’t enough “knowledge and funding” around SCAD and women’s health.

“I want to use this experience to advocate for better support … we want to feel supported and we want health professionals to have that knowledge,” she said.