They say your life can change in the blink of an eye. I know better than most just how true that is. One day you’re an active, happy mother of two small children, the next, it’s all but unrecognisable.
For me, that day was 17 January 2022. How many times have I wished I could have altered the sequence of events that day? How many times have I wished I hadn’t accidentally fallen from a great height? But life, as we all know, does not have a rewind button. London’s Air Ambulance (LAA) was dispatched within three minutes of the 999 call, and by my side within 10.
The team’s swift arrival saved me: those first few minutes were the most crucial and had the wait been even a couple of minutes more, I probably wouldn’t be here writing this. When they found me, my condition was dire. I was hyperventilating, unnaturally cold and pale, I had a weak pulse and had suffered significant blood loss.
My heart raced at 132 beats per minute (double the norm), my blood pressure was unrecordable and I had suffered multiple bone fractures. The team gave me a general anaesthetic in order to intubate and take over my breathing, and performed a surgery to the left side of my chest to re-inflate my punctured lung. I know now that both procedures ensured that maximum oxygen made it to my vital organs – especially to my brain and heart.
Every second counted, but so did the LAA team’s every action, from their swift arrival, to carrying out vital scans, to putting me in an induced coma, to.
