A widow who was hospitalised following a collision with a bus said her late husband told her to keep fighting because there was ‘no room upstairs’.
Carole Attle, 74, from Eaglescliffe, was shopping in Stockton on 28 July last year when she was hit by a bus.
She said: “I’d been in Matalan and had bought a present for somebody, which my daughter found in the boot of my car. After that I know nothing until five weeks later when I woke up in a hospital bed.”
Two paramedic crews from the North East Ambulance Service (NEAS) and two paramedics and a doctor from the Great North Air Ambulance Service (GNAAS) were dispatched to the scene to help Carole who had suffered several serious injuries including head trauma.
She was put into a medically induced coma and taken to James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough by the NEAS road crew, accompanied by GNAAS’ team.
Her daughter Rebecca Dowson, 50, was at work in the library at the same hospital when she was told the news about her mother.
She said: “Two officers came for me and then I was escorted over from the library to resus to see my mum.
“I was told the x-rays don’t look good, and they’ve done as much as they can to help her.”
Carole was bruised from head to toe and sustained a broken eye socket and nose, three broken ribs on each side of her body, broke the top of her elbow, and suffered a concerning head injury and bleed on the brain.
Rebecca said: “She spent seven weeks in intensive care and two weeks in the trauma ward, and during that time we had at least four difficult conversations where they advised she wasn’t going to make it.”
Carole added: “When I was in intensive care I don’t know whether it was real or what it was but I woke up one day and I could have sworn my husband was in bed beside me. He was saying basically there’s no room upstairs for you and we don’t want you going to the other place, so get yourself pulled round and fighting and get out of here, and I think I turned a corner after that.”
She eventually returned home in October but had a care team for a further nine weeks to help with her recovery.
Rebecca said: “She’s missed a big chunk of her life and is still coming to terms with it.
“Even daft things, like when I first started doing her shopping for her, she thought I was spending a lot of money, but she didn’t realise the cost of living had gone up so quick.”
The family live near GNAAS’ headquarters in Eaglescliffe, and recently visited to learn more about the charity and offer their thanks for the team’s help.
Rebecca said: “I’m just in total awe of GNAAS as we see them flying past all the time and I always see them and NEAS when I’m at work.
“They’re both a credit to the area and so are the teams at James Cook. I’m not normally short of words, but I can’t put into words how I feel about them. They saved my mum’s life that’s all I can say, I’ve still got my mum and that to me is priceless.”
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