The parents of a “lovely and bubbly” young mum have been told their daughter may never regain consciousness after an asthma attack caused her to go into cardiac arrest.

Emily Lawes, 27, who has only ever suffered from mild asthma, stopped breathing for 10 minutes when an ambulance was called to her home in Blackfen on July 4.

Her dad Nick Lawes, 53, told News Shopper: “The specialist said it happened so fast it was almost like a nut allergy reaction.

“It literally constricted her airways so tightly she couldn’t get oxygen into her brain and her brain couldn’t tell her heart to beat.”

Nick and his wife, Mandy, a 51 year-old city worker, were on holiday in Rhodes when Emily started to have trouble breathing but her 18-year-old sister Alice was indoors.

“Alice called us and said, ‘I don’t want to panic you but Emily is having an asthma attack’. We said, ‘OK, Emily knows what to do’,” Nick recalled.

However Emily, who has a seven-year-old daughter, deteriorated after the nebuliser paramedics gave her to pump oxygen into her lungs did not work.

Nick described how his daughter went into cardiac arrest as she was led out to the ambulance before she was rushed to Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital in Woolwich.

Six weeks after the severe attack, Emily is in the high-dependency unit with a global hypnoxic brain injury which has affected every part of her brain. Doctors believe she cannot see anything when she opens her eyes.

“[The doctors] can’t say what it is for sure, but they think it is more than likely involuntary movement, where the brain is so confused it’s sending messages that are not going anywhere.”

But Nick is adamant his daughter is aware of what is happening despite her injury.

“She can definitely hear us. If I talk to her, her heart rate goes down and she calms down,” he said.

The family is waiting to transfer the young mum and accounts clerk to a neurological rehabilitation centre in Putney where she will receive specialist treatment.

“The doctors said they have done all they can do for her. Everything about her is well apart from the brain and they are not trained enough to give her more specialist care.”

While the family is optimistic Emily will recover, they have been told there is a chance she may never fully regain consciousness.

They now want to raise the profile of asthma as a serious condition after Emily's mild asthma caused such a strong attack.

As they wait for updates on her condition, Emily’s friends have started a GoFundMe page to raise money to cover some of the costs of her recovery – which has reached a staggering £2,900 in just two days.

Nick said: “The support is amazing. It blows us away.

“We’ve got a long road ahead so the money will go towards rehab costs - whatever we need to do for her. At the moment, we don’t know where the road leads,” Nick told News Shopper.

Speaking about Emily’s incredible spirit, he added: “She’s just bubbly and lovely; she’s a gentle; she’s a normal 27 year old and a devoted mum.

“She’s got everything on her side - her age and her health. She didn’t smoke and she wasn’t a big drinker.

“Emily has surprised us all her life, and hopefully she’ll surprise us again.”