Jonathan's Story

Peterborough Telegraph

In September 2022, everything changed for 36-year-old Jonathan when he suffered a life-threatening medical emergency in the middle of the night at his home in Peterborough.

Transcript

00:00Son, you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, smarter than you think, and

00:09loved more than you know.

00:13Lots of love from Mum.

00:16Emergency, is the patient breathing?

00:25Sometimes I go over on Saturday, but I didn't go that day.

00:29Hello, I'm calling for myself, I've come, I'm feeling a strange feeling in my body.

00:34About 8 o'clock Sunday morning, I got a call saying that he was in Addenbrookes on life

00:40support.

00:41I've woken up about 45 minutes ago, and I can hardly move.

00:45And they didn't think he would make it.

00:47No, I can't pull myself up, I've got a petrol can in the back of my head, it's unbearable.

00:54It's unbearable, I can't move.

00:58And I wish that now that I had gone, so I would have been there and I could have phoned

01:04the ambulance earlier.

01:06Oh dear, I'm scared, I'm scared.

01:18Hello, Cambridge.

01:20My name's Andy Bates, I'm a critical care paramedic here at East Anglian Air Ambulance.

01:25I was working with Dr Ed Gold.

01:27It was a pretty normal winter's evening.

01:31The phone rang in the early hours.

01:34They gave us limited information.

01:37We knew that the job was in Peterborough.

01:40We knew there was an ambulance crew on scene that was struggling to manage him and they'd

01:43asked for us to assist.

01:46We obviously only respond by car during the hours of darkness here at Cambridge.

01:52There was information to say that he had a really bad headache.

01:55He was unconscious when the ambulance crew managed to fight their way into his house

01:58and I think he'd had a seizure either prior to or during the ambulance crew's time with

02:04him.

02:05All of that information, it gives you quite a good indication that there's probably a

02:08bleed going on in the brain.

02:11Presumably there'd been a ruptured blood vessel.

02:13We can't fix that but what we can do is we can prevent and reduce secondary brain injury

02:18where the brain starts to swell, increase pressure and then it starts to force the brain

02:23down through the hole in the bottom of the skull.

02:26And the way we do that is we put them into an induced coma.

02:30They're sort of generally provided in hospital in an intensive care setting so we were essentially

02:34able to bring those treatment modalities forward by a couple of hours.

02:41Certainly once you've done the immediate things and you've got the patient stabilised to the

02:45point and you're sort of trundling down the road taking the patient to hospital and you've

02:48got time to take a deep breath, you then start seeing them more as an individual and

02:54humanise the patient a little bit more.

02:57He would help anybody.

02:58He's kind, he's generous and it won't be worth living without him in it because he's sort

03:07of my life.

03:08Hey mum.

03:09Hello Johnny.

03:10I remember up until I made the 999 call and then it's completely blank for nine weeks.

03:29It was jaw-dropping to know that I'd had a stroke and I'd had three aneurysms in my head.

03:36If the Air Ambulance wasn't there, it's simple, I would not be here today.

03:40So it is vital that we have these people because they did literally save my life.

03:46If Andy hadn't got into the property when he did, Jonathan wouldn't be here now.

03:55He had three minutes to live.

03:59I think all of us at East Anglian Air Ambulance feel pride in the service that we're able

04:04to provide to patients and their families.

04:08And all of that is only possible because the public are generous to the point that they're

04:12essentially funding everything that we do.

04:16I think we're a lot closer than we were.

04:21I just don't take life for granted anymore.

04:23I just get on with it and just live it.

04:25Make every day good.

04:26I'm very, very lucky to still be here.

04:32Jonathan's remarkable recovery wouldn't have been possible without public support.

04:35From as little as £1 per week, you can play our lottery for the chance to win cash prizes

04:40and help save lives across East Anglia.

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