“Am I dead?”, Kate asked the nurse when she woke up in intensive care. She had no recollection of the life-changing accident she had endured just two days before. This remains the case to this day.
On a March spring day in 2019, Kate Rose was riding with her cycling group in Woburn when her front wheel went down a thin, deep pothole, catapulting her off the bike at speed. Kate sustained multiple severe injuries as she hit the ground, including broken ribs and a punctured lung, a fractured skull, and a brain bleed.
The other members of the cycling club called 999 and Kate’s husband, Andy. He describes, “When I arrived, the police and ambulance service were on site and paramedics told me that the air ambulance was on its way. I watched the Magpas Air Ambulance helicopter land shortly afterwards in a nearby field, the team were updated on Kate’s condition and quickly got to work.”
At the scene, Magpas Air Ambulance Doctor Rishi and Critical Care Paramedic Alex placed Kate under general anaesthetic to protect her traumatic brain injury—a procedure they can only perform outside of a hospital thanks to their advanced medical training. They also performed a potentially sight-saving surgical procedure at the scene, as Kate was showing signs and symptoms of build-up of blood behind the eye which can cause blindness if untreated. Once stable, they airlifted Kate to the closest Major Trauma Centre, Addenbrooke’s Hospital—an 18 minute flight away, which would have taken an hour by road.
Kate remained in Addenbrooke’s Hospital for a month and spent another month with the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Trust in Milton Keynes to support her recovery. Kate explains, “It was here I became aware of how significant the early intervention of Magpas Air Ambulance had been: limiting the long-term impact of my severe head injury.”
A year later, Kate visited the Magpas Air Ambulance base and met members of the team who had helped save her that dreadful day. Magpas Air Ambulance Critical Care Paramedic Alex said, “It was lovely to see Kate again, under much better circumstances. When we meet patients we’ve treated following their recovery, it feels good to know that the work we do genuinely makes a difference.”
Kate sums up, “When I see Magpas Air Ambulance’s mission statement: to save lives and limit disability by taking enhanced emergency medical care to patients in their moment of need, it still almost reduces me to tears, as it perfectly summarises my experience of this charity. I have such appreciation and deep gratitude for this lifesaving service.
“Unforeseen events are unfortunately a part of life that a lot of us have experienced, or will experience, at some time. I now volunteer for the charity and hope to raise funds too, to enable Magpas Air Ambulance to continue to provide the level of support I had to people in need in the future.”
