Crash victim's debt to North Air Ambulance

Feb 14 2010 by Rob Pattinson, Sunday Sun

CRASH victim Katie Hedley barely escaped a horror smash with her life then asked paramedics: “did I break a nail?”

The 24-year-old had a broken neck and all the skin was torn from the side of her face when she made the quip at the roadside, in County Durham.

Katie’s head had been pinned against the tarmac as her boyfriend’s convertible flipped out of control, and left her dangling from the passenger seat.

An air ambulance rushed the patient to Teesside’s James Cook Hospital where medics put staples in her head then nursed her back to health in the high dependency unit.

Before the accident Katie had it all. The stunning junior marketing executive and her partner David Birkin had been driving to view their first house together as a couple, when their Honda soft-top hit trouble.

For more than a year now she has been battling to recover. For the first three months Katie was confined to a neck brace and felt unable to go out in public as she underwent three operations.

But as surgeons have rebuilt the crash victim’s face, she has rebuilt her life and her confidence with the help of loved-ones. Last month she was finally discharged by doctors.

Today the brave Sedgefield lass has spoken of the agony of her injuries and her debt of thanks to the Great North Air Ambulance for saving her life.

Katie, said: “It’s been horrendous – it’s been the worst time of my life, but I know how lucky I am to be alive.

“It’s impossible to believe how much your life can change all of a sudden, by something totally out of your control.

“I’ll never forget waking up at the roadside, I didn’t know what had happened.

“ I looked up and Jane from the Air Ambulance was there with me.

“I said, ‘have I broken a nail?’ She just smiled and said no and held my hand. I was in and out of consciousness but she made sure I was OK.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to thank her enough for what she did for me.”

Katie and boyfriend David, 26, a dentist in Catterick had been an item for a year-and-a-half and were planning the rest of their lives together when disaster struck.

The couple had turned off the A177, north of their home town and were heading towards Bishop Middleham, near Ferryhill, for a house viewing, last January.

Katie said: “It was a nice, lovely, sunny Saturday morning, so even though it was winter we had the top down on the car.

“We must have hit some diesel on the road or something because the car just started skidding. It actually flipped over.

“I blacked out, so all I remember was the sensation of moving sideways.

“While I was unconscious I was hanging upside down on my seat belt and my face was scrapping along the ground.

“I don’t remember it but I must have looked horrific when the Air Ambulance arrived.

“When I woke up Jane was there telling me I was going to be OK. That’s when I asked about my nails. I’d just had them done for Christmas and I was really worried about them. It’s crazy what you think of in a situation like that .

“They took me to James Cook Hospital where I had to have plastic surgery on my face and they put staples in my head.

“The doctors told me I’d broken my neck, but I was really lucky because my vertebra had cracked straight through the bone, which is why I wasn’t paralysed.

“They said I’d suffered a “degloving”, which is when all the skin gets peeled back of your head.

Hearing all of that was so traumatic I couldn’t even look in a mirror.

“I was in the High Dependency Unit for three days before I was moved on to a general ward. Then it was another four days before I was allowed home.”