Second-year anthropology student Melody Madill was on Skype with her fiancee Anna Messner, an American who lives in Tennessee.
‘‘The entire time I was terrified, I've never felt that terrified before,'' Miss Messner said.
Her brother, David Neal, frantically searched for a way to get help. He tried calling 911, but the operator told him they could not do anything from overseas. So Mr Neal went online.
‘‘I went on Facebook, I looked all over for a go-between, and then I went on the New Zealand subreddit and someone offered to help.''
The New Zealand subreddit, a subsection of the online forum Reddit, has about 62,000 users.
Mr Neal posted a message on Tuesday afternoon with the title ‘‘Mayday need someone to call 111''.
After a couple of moments, Mr Neal posted again: ‘‘Help''. Soon after, a Christchurch woman offered to call emergency services.
Meanwhile, Ms Madill was coming around. At first, she was confused.
''We were just talking, and then all of a sudden, she [Miss Messner] was yelling about the ambulance and people at the door, and I was really confused. And she told me I had a seizure, and apparently, initially, I was quite doubtful of that,'' Ms Madill said.
''I was so disoriented by the whole thing.''
Ms Madill ended up opening the door for the paramedics.
Miss Messner was ‘‘completely freaking out'', Ms Madill said.
‘‘She was hysterical.''
Ms Madill herself was not scared by the episode until she ‘‘became lucid'' and realised what was going on.
Ms Madill said she had been diagnosed with epilepsy when she was a child, but had not had a seizure in about a decade.
‘‘I thought I'd outgrown it.''
Tests at Dunedin Hospital on Tuesday ‘‘didn't show anything'', and Ms Madill said she felt much better last night.
Ms Madill and Miss Messner have been together for about a year and a-half after meeting online. Ms Madill said Miss Messner hoped to move to Dunedin soon.
- Additional reporting The New Zealand Herald
