A woman has been left needing open-heart surgery - after a spooked horse kicked her in the leg.
Paris Hedger, 20, went horse riding while on holiday in Port Vila, Vanuatu, with her friends.
But she says the horse went “crazy” and kicked her in her right leg as she was walking behind it.
She was left with a swollen leg and was given an ice pack and a wheelchair - thinking she'd suffered nothing more than bruising.
But just one month later, she was left in intensive care at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, US, after blood clots in her leg travelled to her lungs.
Now she needs open-heart surgery to remove the blood clots from the pulmonary arteries, and has been told she’ll be put into a medically induced coma this week to give her lungs a chance to "reset."
Paris, a former travel blogger, from Adelaide, Australia, said: “I wouldn’t recommend going horse riding in unfamiliar environments - the only option left for me is major surgery and a coma.
“If the surgery goes well, it’s going to be a long road to recovery.
“But if it goes wrong - I could be looking at a three-month coma, and an emergency double-lung transplant.”
The accident happened while Paris was in Port Vila, Vanuatu, on November 25, 2023.
She was on a horse riding excursion with her friends - but had doubts about her horse’s temperament.
“I felt quite unsafe,” she said.
“The horses were all riding really close to each other.
“Mine went crazy when I tried to get on it, and just kicked back at me.”
Paris was told to sit down by helpers and back at her accommodation, she was given ice and a wheelchair.
But, thinking she’d badly bruised her leg, she didn’t get checked out by a doctor.
On November 28, she flew home to Adelaide - and noticed her leg looked really swollen.
She said: “I went to the hospital to get checked out.
“They wanted to rule out a break, so I had my leg x-rayed.
“Once doctors found out it wasn’t broken, I was sent home.”
On December 17, Paris set off to New York for another holiday with her friends.
She noticed on the plane that she was suffering from a bad cough and felt breathless after walking several steps.
By the time she transferred in LA, she struggled to breathe at all.
“I visited the GP in Los Angeles,” she said.
“He sent me straight to the emergency room in Cedars-Sinai Hospital.
“There, they found I had blood clots all over my lungs - which must’ve travelled from my leg.”
Doctors admitted Paris to the intensive care unit (ICU) - where she stayed for three days.
She stayed in the hospital for 10 days in total - until she stabilised, and was allowed to be prescribed blood thinners.
“My doctors asked me if I’d had any trauma in my leg,” she said.
“They couldn’t believe no-one picked the blood clots up beforehand.
“Long flights, obviously, can cause them to grow even more.
“I was given lots of different medications to help with my heart.
“I couldn’t do any exercise at all.”
Paris Hedger, 20, went horse riding while on holiday in Port Vila, Vanuatu, with her friends.
But she says the horse went “crazy” and kicked her in her right leg as she was walking behind it.
She was left with a swollen leg and was given an ice pack and a wheelchair - thinking she'd suffered nothing more than bruising.
But just one month later, she was left in intensive care at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, US, after blood clots in her leg travelled to her lungs.
Now she needs open-heart surgery to remove the blood clots from the pulmonary arteries, and has been told she’ll be put into a medically induced coma this week to give her lungs a chance to "reset."
Paris, a former travel blogger, from Adelaide, Australia, said: “I wouldn’t recommend going horse riding in unfamiliar environments - the only option left for me is major surgery and a coma.
“If the surgery goes well, it’s going to be a long road to recovery.
“But if it goes wrong - I could be looking at a three-month coma, and an emergency double-lung transplant.”
The accident happened while Paris was in Port Vila, Vanuatu, on November 25, 2023.
She was on a horse riding excursion with her friends - but had doubts about her horse’s temperament.
“I felt quite unsafe,” she said.
“The horses were all riding really close to each other.
“Mine went crazy when I tried to get on it, and just kicked back at me.”
Paris was told to sit down by helpers and back at her accommodation, she was given ice and a wheelchair.
But, thinking she’d badly bruised her leg, she didn’t get checked out by a doctor.
On November 28, she flew home to Adelaide - and noticed her leg looked really swollen.
She said: “I went to the hospital to get checked out.
“They wanted to rule out a break, so I had my leg x-rayed.
“Once doctors found out it wasn’t broken, I was sent home.”
On December 17, Paris set off to New York for another holiday with her friends.
She noticed on the plane that she was suffering from a bad cough and felt breathless after walking several steps.
By the time she transferred in LA, she struggled to breathe at all.
“I visited the GP in Los Angeles,” she said.
“He sent me straight to the emergency room in Cedars-Sinai Hospital.
“There, they found I had blood clots all over my lungs - which must’ve travelled from my leg.”
Doctors admitted Paris to the intensive care unit (ICU) - where she stayed for three days.
She stayed in the hospital for 10 days in total - until she stabilised, and was allowed to be prescribed blood thinners.
“My doctors asked me if I’d had any trauma in my leg,” she said.
“They couldn’t believe no-one picked the blood clots up beforehand.
“Long flights, obviously, can cause them to grow even more.
“I was given lots of different medications to help with my heart.
“I couldn’t do any exercise at all.”
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FunTranscript
00:00So today I have a meeting with the lung transplant surgeons from Melbourne.
00:04I cannot even believe that this is my life. Anyway, I thought I'd take you guys with me
00:09throughout the day because it's quite a big day for me. So at the start of this year,
00:14I had blood clots in my lungs and it's been six months. They haven't gone away. I've actually
00:19gotten more. I've been diagnosed with CTEF. My body is struggling a lot. My heart is like
00:26triple the size. My lungs are all sorts of messed up. The only option for me is either surgery or
00:33lung transplant. So today we're going to find out what that will be. So I've been seeing the
00:36specialists at the Royal Adelaide and when I got there, we were able to go through my scans.
00:41They showed me like all of my different CT scans of my lungs. They're really messed up. And then
00:47my heart is also insanely enlarged. Here's like a normal heart and this is what mine looks like.
00:55As you can see, it's like kind of taking over my lungs. Then I had to get some x-rays and more
01:01scans done and all of that. So I've had my appointment and it ended up being me just
01:06talking with the lung transplant coordinators about like having a lung transplant as a backup
01:12option. I think they're definitely going to do this surgery. It just depends on when. I'm hoping
01:17soon, like as you can tell, even just talking now, I'm sitting down and I'm out of breath.
01:22Yeah, I feel like since the start of this year, my health has deteriorated a lot and it's not
01:26getting better with medication. It's actually getting worse. I hope that they can just do
01:31this surgery, which is when they like cut open my chest and literally remove the blood clots from
01:37my lungs. But it is so risky and they don't normally operate on people as high risk as me,
01:44but they kind of have no choice. If something goes wrong during the operation or if it's not
01:49effective, they want to know if I want to have a lung transplant that could come in many different
01:55ways and forms. Like I could be in a coma for months waiting for one. If it happens during
02:00surgery, who knows? It's pretty hectic at the moment and I literally just cannot do anything.
02:08Like I spend every single day doing the same thing, just staying inside. Hopefully I'll be
02:13on a plane soon to Melbourne. I just can't believe that after six months of this, I'm getting worse,
02:21not better. I haven't really been posting much because I just don't have the energy or the
02:28happiness to be posting things. Like I cannot post like positive, happy,
02:34fun things because I'm not in a positive and happy mood at all. This past month has been
02:40hell for me. Like I've had so many operations and tests and all these things and they all say that
02:48I'm getting worse or like there's been no change. I have had multiple right heart catheters done,
02:54which is an operation where I'm fully awake and they insert a catheter through my arm
02:59down into my heart. I can feel everything. They insert dye into my heart. So you have
03:04heart palpitations because of that. A couple of days ago, I had 15 vials of blood taken from my
03:09arm. So they know everything about my blood, ready for these surgeries. I'm going back into
03:15hospital on Monday to get like a full body ultrasound, more CT scans, more x-rays. I feel
03:22like a lab rat without the superpowers. That is why I haven't been posting much and yeah,
03:28that is an update on where I'm at.