Episode 3 Close Calls: On Camera

A close call, a moment of danger when life can hang in the balance.

What would happen if I wasn't found, or didn't find a way out of it?

A split second when the outcome could go either way.

It's a choice - life or death.

The difference between disaster and survival.

We saw a lady who was critically ill, if not dying, in front of us.

I kept thinking the hotel was going to fall on us.

These are the people that have been there and lived to tell the tale.

It's a day they'll never forget.

The day they had a close call.

Today on Close Calls.

Mountain rescuers come to the aid of an injured cyclist

in the Peak District.

He's gone over the handlebars in what appears to be a harmless fall.

I just end up on the side,

so I'm just thinking, "All right, I need to get up

"and get on the bike and carry on moving."

But he can't - he's severely injured.

And within seconds he's close to bleeding to death

on the mountainside.

There was a LOT of blood.

The air ambulance is his only chance.

But even that might be too late.

Every minute that he went on was a minute

that his vital organs weren't receiving enough blood supply.

Also today -

an emergency call handler has a little girl on the line.

But there's an added complication.

Two lives now depend on this little girl.

Kinder Scout in the Peak District.

A local mountain rescue team have summoned air ambulance medics

to help treat a critically injured mountain biker.

He was bleeding to death.

Without a doubt.

They're miles from the nearest hospital,

and they're scared they're going to lose him.

There were lots of signs all pointing towards him having lost a significant amount of blood.

27-year-old Shyamenda Purslow is a lecturer at Manchester University.

He's also studying for a PhD.

When he's not working, he loves to go out on his mountain bike.

I started enjoying cycling more maybe two years ago, actually.

Went to the National Cycling Centre

and did some training on mountain bikes,

and it was just the best day.

Especially when you're going downhill

and you've got to really have nerves of steel,

cos your heart's pumping like mad.

And yet you have to be really relaxed and focused

to be able to move just the right way.

Today, Shyamenda is in the Peak District with his best friend, Greg,

who's also a keen mountain biker.

We'd been planning it for quite some time, I suppose, months.

And the heavens finally aligned and we went out.

You know, we saw a few things, saw some deer.

Yeah, it was just really cool.

Saw a lot of people out because the weather was really nice.

The two cyclists are out in the Kinder Scout region

of the Peak District.

It's a popular area for mountain bikers,

as its tough terrain makes it quite challenging.

It's also the highest region of the National Park.

Bit of an uphill struggle in some places, which wasn't so nice.

You feel like the sheep are laughing at you, just pushing your bikes up.

Now at the top, over 2,000ft above sea level,

it's time for Shyamenda and Greg to enjoy the downhill ride.

We were going down fairly fast, but it was just straight, clear paths.

Through a few farms, sheep running out of the way.

-HE CHUCKLES

-So it was pretty enjoyable.

But suddenly, that all changes.

Then I just all of a sudden go over, pretty quickly.

I just end up on the side,

and I can spot Greg sort of going in the distance,

so I'm just thinking, "All right, I need to get up

"and get on the bike and carry on moving."

As I was getting up, you know, felt a little bit tight

by my, say, lower abdomen, if you will.

But I just thought, "I'm probably a bit winded."

And so I'm walking towards the bike and then, at that point,

I hear Greg sort of shouting, running back up.

And I remember thinking, "This is ridiculous,

"why is he running back up? He should be cycling back up."

It didn't make sense. And he's shouting, "You need to get down."

I'm there thinking, "Get down for what?"

But Greg can see his friend has a serious wound on his thigh,

caused by him catching his leg on the handlebars.

Sort of at that point, my right hand started to feel quite warm,

which was a bit strange.

So I then end up looking down, and I just see a bit of red.

It's then I realise, "OK, I'm bleeding. All right.

So I lay down, or I go to lay down,

and I was there going, "Oh, I best just take this bag off."

He's like, "No, no, no. You'd best not move at all."

Greg tells him to lie down on the ground,

and immediately puts pressure on the area

where he thinks the blood is coming from.

He has to get help quickly.

But his mobile phone has no signal.

He's also shouting for other people who might be walking by,

shouting for help.

Thankfully, Greg's cries are heard by a passing walker,

who takes over trying to stem the blood.

I don't know if he said his name or not.

I just remember he was heavier than Greg, cos they swapped,

in terms of applying pressure, and I was like, "Oh, I know he's here."

HE LAUGHS

Eventually, Greg gets a signal on his phone

and can call through to the emergency services.

The first crew to respond are the Kinder Mountain Rescue Team.

We'd just finished the training for the day,

and we were loading up the vehicles.

And the call came through, so we quite literally

threw everything in the Land Rovers.

By good fortune, the team are only two miles away.

So within a matter of minutes, they're fast approaching the scene.

One of them begins to record the rescue.

We've got a call to say that there's an injured mountain biker

up on the moor. So we've just all driven over to the bottom,

we're now tramping up to the top.

They're shocked by what greets them.

There was a lot of blood.

He was bleeding to death.

Without a doubt.

The team cover Shyamenda with a tent to try and keep him warm.

There was a member of the public

holding pressure on his right upper leg.

There's obviously quite a bit of blood on site.

I took over from the member of the public,

which he'd done a sterling job stopping the bleeding.

With Shyamenda having lost so much blood

in such a short space of time,

the team need to find out exactly what's causing it, and fast.

Mick Cousins is one of the mountain rescue volunteers,

but is also a trained ambulance technician.

He starts to investigate.

I got a free hand and managed to cut up his trouser leg

to have a look at the wound,

and found that he had about a 25mm puncture wound

about three quarters of the way up his right leg.

And then I thought "Well, this blood isn't coming from there."

Carried on cutting up, and he had a...

sort of a swiping laceration.

150mm long, deeper in the middle.

That's where the blood was coming from.

Shyamenda has ruptured his femoral artery

going over the handlebars of his bike.

With this type of potentially fatal injury,

he could lose all the blood from his body within five minutes.

The main artery for your leg is the femoral artery,

so it's the one that takes all the blood from about your waist

down to just above your knee, where it starts splitting.

So the blood supply for all of your leg is basically that one.

There are now more than 20 people on the mountain,

including police, ambulance, and mountain rescue.

They all know how critical the situation is.

The only one who doesn't is Shyamenda.

I was just there thinking,

"This isn't probably that serious."

I'm used to getting cuts and scrapes anyway, so I just thought,

"Ah, I'm just bleeding. I don't understand why he's panicking so much."

But he has now lost so much blood,

he's drifting in and out of consciousness.

I could hear what everyone was saying.

I think I was communicating as best I can.

Whether I was coming across that way, I don't know.

They probably mentioned that it's...

it's serious.

It is.

Shyamenda is slipping away,

and they need to get him off the mountain.

There was a road ambulance down by the road.

But we were looking at the fastest time

to actually get him to hospital, because time was of the essence.

So really we needed an air ambulance.

Later, the helicopter arrives.

But to reach it means carrying a dangerously deteriorating Shyamenda

over rough terrain, which could prove fatal.

What we didn't want to do was to disturb any clot that was already there.

We all hope we'd cope if we were caught up in an emergency,

but what if you're only three years old,

and getting help is entirely down to you?

Nailsea, in Somerset.

A 999 call has just come through to the emergency services.

On the line is a child.

Emma is just three years old.

Her mum, Catherine, has fallen down the stairs and knocked herself out.

But there's an added complication.

The ambulance is racing to the scene.

Emma needs to stay on the line with the call handler

if there's any chance of saving her mum and the baby.

Three-year-old Emma loves hanging out with her mummy.

She is very much into her Barbies and her dollies and playing

and having cups of tea and tea parties and things.

But when her big brother Harry is around,

Emma wants to do everything he does.

Harry is in year one at school.

He's been learning about the emergency services.

So when he came home from school,

we decided to take the conversation on at the dinner table,

and we talked to him about 999

and tried to teach him our address.

Emma was incredibly keen to join in.

She thought it was a very exciting thing to do.

But it was this bit of fun

that would ultimately save two lives.

It's Friday afternoon.

Emma and her mum Catherine are at home.

We were just doing some puzzles and playing around,

and then we left the house to go and collect Harry from school.

Emma and I had actually left the house, all ready to go,

at the point that I decided to go back to the toilet.

I rushed back into the house and asked Emma to wait by the front door.

Catherine's now late for the school run, so starts to rush.

As I was running down the stairs,

I lost my footing about two stairs from the top. I went to grab the banister as I fell,

and unfortunately I'd hung some washing on the banisters that day,

which caused me to slip rather than catching the banister.

Catherine loses her balance and tumbles down the stairs,

landing in a heap at the bottom,

banging her head as she does so.

I think I may have lost consciousness

as I came down the stairs and was just sort of

a bit groggy at the bottom.

She had the phone in her hand, but she couldn't make the 9 work.

So I remember pushing the 9s, and that was the last thing I remember.

Call handler Sarah answers the young girl's call for help.

Catherine is not the only one who could be injured,

but the call handler is only getting half the story

from three-year-old Emma.

But Catherine wasn't holding the baby in her arms.

What the call handler has no way of knowing yet is...

she's actually 33 weeks pregnant.

She coaxes more information from little Emma.

Luckily, Emma remembers,

and an ambulance is immediately dispatched.

The call handler now focuses on Emma's mum,

who is lying slumped at the bottom of the stairs.

Emma stays close to her mother.

Thankfully, Catherine is slowly regaining consciousness.

The call handler turns her attention to the baby, who she still thinks

was in Catherine's arms when she fell.

The full picture is finally clear to the call taker.

With only seven weeks till Christmas,

emergency worker Sarah now understands

there is a serious chance a bad fall could mean

life-threatening damage to Catherine's unborn child.

The ambulance is nearly there.

Michelle Foster is one of the emergency care assistants.

It became apparent that the lady concerned

was actually heavily pregnant as well.

You then have two patients to consider.

Slipping in and out of consciousness,

Catherine is desperately worried about her baby.

I was just really scared.

Unfortunately, I hadn't felt the baby move at all at that point.

So I think it was just fear.

I knew I'd fallen a long way.

And I knew it was hurting, and that I was in labour,

but the baby wasn't moving.

The call handler reassures three-year-old Emma

help is on its way.

It's vital the emergency team can get to Catherine quickly.

Within minutes of Emma making the 999 call,

the ambulance crew are pulling up outside the house.

Emma obviously was very relieved to see us,

and we quickly reassured her,

although she was very upset and very scared and crying.

But still handling the situation amazingly well

for a three-year-old little girl.

Better than most adults, to be honest with you.

Ambulance people come and make Mummy better.

The crew quickly find Emma and her mum.

She didn't look in a particularly good way.

She was breathing,

but she did appear to be unconscious at the time.

So we're looking at her airway first of all to make sure

that she can breathe comfortably for herself.

And as we were making these assessments,

she started to regain consciousness and, although groggy,

did speak to us quite quickly.

And Catherine has just one thing on her mind - the baby.

Saying to them, "He's not moving, he's not moving."

Catherine is rushed to hospital, where both she and the baby

can get the care they both desperately need.

As the ambulance arrives at A&E, Catherine feels something.

The baby kicked.

The relief at that point - I didn't really care that I was in pain.

I didn't care about anything. I just remember going,

"He's moved, he's moved! Which was the best moment ever.

It just meant that whatever happened at that point, he was OK. He'd moved.

It was just such a massive sigh of relief for all of us.

There was lots of whoops and cheers.

It's great news the baby is OK.

However, Catherine has ruptured her placenta in the fall.

This is an injury that could be fatal for both her and the baby.

But, after three days of around-the-clock monitoring

by the neo-natal medical team, she's allowed home.

Then, three weeks later,

at the beginning of December,

Emma's new baby brother, George, finally arrives.

There's no doubt, without Emma's quick thinking to call 999,

it would have been a very different story.

Are you going to help me?

It's incredibly hard to think about what could have happened

and how poorly both George and I could have been

if Emma hadn't done what she did.

Potentially, the worst case scenario

was that Cat could have lost the baby.

And at the time, she was unconscious,

so there were two lives in danger, and both saved, thanks to Emma.

It just makes you realise that at such a young age

they really are capable of so much.

With George's early arrival, it meant a very special Christmas Day.

Harry and Emma were so excited to have him there,

and he was absolutely spoiled rotten. For baby number three,

I don't think he'd have got half the amount of things he did

without the trauma that had happened before.

And it was just fantastic to have him

part of a lovely family Christmas.

Back to Kinder Scout in the Peak District,

where Shyamenda Purslow is being kept alive

inside this orange mountain rescue tent.

He's fallen off his mountain bike and ruptured his femoral artery.

Rescuers are doing all they can,

but he's lost so much blood he needs specialist care,

or he hasn't long to live.

We needed to deal with the situation as quickly as we could.

Stem the flow

and get him to hospital as quickly as we could.

An air ambulance is on its way, but it's a tense wait.

Consultant anaesthetist, Alex James,

is part of the medical team on board.

From the time of receiving the call,

it usually takes us between three to four minutes to be up in the air

and on the way to an incident.

Our helicopter travels at roughly 140mph.

We actually got there within 20 minutes.

The waiting mountain rescue team set off a flare

to help the pilot find them

and capture the air medics' arrival on a headcam.

When we arrived he was severely unwell.

Our main concern was that Shyamenda was drowsy,

very pale, very clammy.

There were lots of signs all pointing towards

him having lost a significant amount of blood.

Shyamenda's only hope of survival is a blood transfusion

and surgery on his artery.

He needs to get to hospital,

so the team give him fluids to stabilise him for the journey,

and then prepare to move him to the helicopter.

It's a short distance, but it's extremely risky.

What we didn't want to do

was to disturb any clot that was already there.

So we didn't actually take any of the dressings down,

cos they were already doing a very good job of stopping the bleeding.

It takes eight members of the highly skilled mountain rescue team

to transfer Shyamenda carefully to the aircraft.

I remember everyone sort of picking me up, moving me to the helicopter,

and getting me on board.

Even at this point, he doesn't realise

how close to death he actually is.

I've never been in hospital,

and I've never known anyone who's been air-rescued,

so I didn't associate them arriving

with sort of imminent death, if you would.

The team has to move quickly, but gently.

Any sudden movement could cause the wound to reopen.

Shyamenda is now safely in the air ambulance.

Every minute that he went on with a low blood pressure

and with a very fast pulse and without enough blood volume in him

was a minute that his vital organs weren't receiving

enough blood supply - for example, his kidneys.

So there was a definite element there that meant we needed to be

as quick as possible in getting him to an appropriate centre.

He's rushed to Wythenshawe Hospital near Manchester

leaving his rescuers hopeful

that he'll get the immediate specialist care he needs in time.

Wythenshawe Hospital, we call it a trauma centre.

It's also quite good cos they've got a plastic surgery there.

They do micro stitching, so they can go into the wound

and actually repair the damage,

and then stitch in layers out from there.

So they're well set up for that sort of injury there.

On the helicopter, the doctor is fighting to keep Shyamenda alive.

We were able to try to correct his blood sugar,

to give him small volumes of fluids to keep his blood pressure

at an adequate level. And we were able to get further

IV access in, so that when he did arrive at hospital,

he had a means of getting blood into him quickly.

After an eight-minute flight, they arrive at the hospital,

with Shyamenda's condition continuing to deteriorate rapidly.

At that time, he was critically unwell and he needed treatment,

in terms of replacing the blood volume that he'd lost,

but also in definitively repairing the damage to his artery.

The thing that had bought us time to do that, and bought the team

in the hospital time to provide all of that treatment he required,

was the fact that the bleeding had been stopped.

One of the staff - I think she was in blue -

sort of saying "You've arrived at Wythenshawe Hospital,"

and I think at that point I just knock out.

Shyamenda is rushed in for emergency surgery.

Five hours later he's out of theatre,

but he's now so ill that the doctors decide

to put him in an induced coma.

He has to stay like this for four days.

When Shyamenda is woken,

his world has been turned upside down.

Waking up and learning

there's operations to be done,

your kidneys are out,

and, oh, you can't move, and you're a bit swollen as well,

and you can't really talk cos you can't breathe.

It was just like, "Oh, wow. Really? Why?"

Shyamenda spends another six and a half weeks in hospital

before being well enough to return home.

It's now ten months since the accident

and, although he's still not fully recovered,

he's making good progress.

Well, I've got some lovely scars.

But I'd rather have those than no leg.

HE LAUGHS

I'm not able to do all the things I used to be able to do before,

but that's getting better.

It's a miracle he made it off the mountain at all.

Having seen him at the scene of the accident, the amount of blood that had been lost,

I think he was very fortunate to be treated by first-aiders

who had the knowledge and ability to stop that bleeding.

Because if he hadn't had good control of the bleeding

from his groin, then he would have lost so much blood from that injury

that he would have had a cardiac arrest and died.

And when the news that Shyamenda has survived

reaches the Kinder Mountain rescue team,

it's just what they all wanted to hear.

Brilliant. You know, because even in our job,

or in the team, very often, we don't get feedback.

Severing a femoral artery is quite a close call for anyone.

So I think he was very lucky on this occasion.

Shyamenda wanted to thank the team personally for saving his life.

So he got on his bike and headed back to the Peak District.

The mountain rescue team and the air ambulance guys are just amazing.

I owe them everything.

To actually have him come down like that,

take the trouble to come from Manchester on his bike,

which was another bonus, and it was quite emotional.

Because he stood in front of us all,

and just to hear him recall

what he could remember of the day,

and what had happened to him in hospital,

and how close he was to passing, really,

was just brilliant.

It was just a great feeling.

For Shyamenda, it's only now that the true horror

of what happened starts to sink in.

I'm very lucky, because I know, like,

if anything went slightly different on that day,

then I'm definitely not here today.

Someone who played a huge role in saving Shyamenda's life

was the passing walker.

That man bought precious time for the rescue team

to get there and get to work.

No-one knows who he is,

but Shyamenda has a heartfelt message for him.

-I love you.

-HE LAUGHS

I really, honestly - to stop and help a stranger,

that's just really inspiring.

You know, just a big thank you. And yeah, all the love in the world.

Shyamenda is a very lucky guy.

A lot of people came together to help him.

So who was that Good Samaritan? If it's you, get in touch.

He'd really like to meet you.

That's it from Close Calls, until next time.