In May last year Nicola had gone to bed, leaving her mum, Sybil, downstairs doing a jigsaw puzzle.
Nicola says, “I heard her on her way up, then I heard an almighty crash. I shot out of bed and Mum was at the bottom of the stairs. It was really horrible. So I called the ambulance and they came fairly quickly.
They took Mum to the hospital and took her straight away for a CT Scan. This was about midnight. It was lovely that they could scan her at that time of night. The scan showed she had fractured her skull and had multiple bleeds into the brain. They told us the next 72 hours were critical, we just had to wait and see what happened.
It was terrible, she was really poorly. If we’d had to wait until next morning for the scan, it would have been awful. We wouldn’t have known what was going on. They couldn’t have known what was wrong with her without the CT Scanner.”
Sybil’s doctors gave her another CT Scan, after about a fortnight, as it was the only way they could see how the bleeds were improving. And after that Sybil had a third scan which confirmed she’d had a slight stroke while in recovery.
Nicola says “It is so wonderful to have the scanner there. To have a second scanner would be great to make sure there wasn’t a queue and to be certain they can always handle emergencies like ours at midnight.”
Sybil says “Nicola knows more about what happened because I was unconscious for quite a while. I don’t remember how the fall happened, or the ambulance, or my first scan.
The Scanner was a wonderful thing to have because it did show up my problem, and that I’d fractured my skull.”
Sybil is getting on really well now. Her doctor says she’s made a remarkable recovery. Nicola and Sybil put that down to how fit she was before it happened and her determination to get better.
As Sybil says, “That wonderful Scan, and the doctors and nurses who looked after me, surely saved my life. A second Scanner would mean people in an emergency like mine would never need to wait for a scan.”