Jonathan's Story
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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.
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04:40and help save lives across East Anglia.