Episode 9 Real Rescues

He can't get to hospital, so the hospital comes to him -

the builder trapped under six tons of work machinery.

It's a fight to save his leg and his life.

And thrown about like a rag doll.

We meet the woman who had this terrifying boat crash.

Hello and welcome to Real Rescues.

The Ambulance Control Centre team here is trained to deal with every

sort of medical emergency.

Their resources include ambulances, rapid response cars,

medibikes and the air ambulance.

And crucially, the professionals who stay on the line to help

and reassure the callers.

Now reassuring the caller could be for a major event,

as you are going to see.

We've got some extraordinary stories for you today.

But also sometimes for very small events,

an example of which Claire can tell us about now.

You just had a very interesting call.

Yeah. It actually came through a different ambulance service,

but it was picked up in a different area.

It was a one-year-old girl who got something stuck up her nose.

-Right. So Mum's in a bit of a panic.

-Mum's in a bit of a panic.

We actually passed it through to ECP, who works in the control room,

-which is an emergency care practitioner.

-And who's that?

That's Julian over there.

-Over the back there, behind the monitors.

-Yeah.

He's just talking to them at the moment,

trying to find out what's stuck.

And see how we can help them and what resources we can send.

Or get them to go off to hospital - whatever's necessary.

See what's necessary. If necessary, take them to hospital.

If not, just triage over the phone and see what we can advise them.

Lovely. OK. I tell you what, we'll try and find out, during the course

of the programme, exactly what that object is stuck up the child's nose.

Oh, yes we will.

16-year-old Samantha won't forget the first day in her new job.

She never got there. She had an accident that was

so serious it stopped her working anywhere for a long while.

It's a wet day and PC Derek Hurn is racing through the driving

rain, after a worrying emergency call has come in.

A teenage girl has been hit by a bus.

16-year-old Sam is in a lot of pain.

Her friend Craig saw it all happen.

Sam was a bit in front of me, walking across the crossing.

The bus was...come round the roundabout.

I shouted out her name and she didn't have time to run or nothing.

Just hit her and sent her flying.

I thought, "What's going to happen?

"Is she going to hit the floor?

"Is she going to hit another car on the other side of the road?

"Is she going to die or something?" You just don't know.

The accident site is very near the hospital,

so the ambulance crew were with Sam in minutes.

The scene itself was a bit bedlam, really.

It was dark, it was raining heavily. And the first impression was,

I saw the bull's-eye of the windscreen of the bus.

"Ouch, that must have hurt."

Sam has been thrown 30 feet down the road.

The damage to the centre of the bus windscreen shows just how

heavy the impact was.

The immediate fear is that she could have neck and back injuries.

The ambulance crew have already fitted her with a collar

and are about to roll her onto a spinal board.

SAM SCREAMS IN PAIN

Sam is in agony.

She was complaining of pain in her right leg.

Our thoughts were possibly a mid-shaft femur break.

The fear is she has a very serious injury to her thigh bone.

An injury here can also affect major blood vessels.

SAM SCREAMS IN PAIN

There's a possibility of arteries being impaired,

so that the blood flow couldn't get through to the rest of the leg.

So the concern is possibly losing the rest of the leg

if the bloody supply isn't maintained.

But the force of the collision means the team can't only

worry about the injury to Sam's leg.

There could be other injuries that she herself probably wasn't

aware of because all she could focus on was the pain on her leg.

We don't know what part of her body hit the bus,

possibly there could be internal bleeding.

Sam is being given gas and air for the pain.

The priority now is to get her off the road as quickly as possible.

She was cold, she was wet, she was frightened. Very noisy.

There were lots of rush hour traffic around.

Police were containing the traffic, but people do get impatient,

they want to get home from work, so they were coming pretty close to us.

As the medics prepare her for the ambulance,

Derek offers to help shield Sam from the rain.

Sam, I'll do that if you like. Go on, then, you go.

Now you've got a handsome man. There you go.

With hospital just down the road, it won't be long before Sam is in A&E.

And there's just time for Derek to hand over her belongings.

Sam will undergo a full series of tests and X-rays to see exactly

what's happened to her leg and whether she has any other injuries.

Well, Sam's thigh bone was completely snapped in two.

She also broke her collarbone.

We caught up with Sam after a long period of recovery.

A day that ended so badly had started full of promise for Sam.

I was on my way to my first day of work.

I was excited, because it was my first proper job, and I looked

across the road, there was nothing coming, so I started to walk.

It was raining, I had my hood up, so I couldn't really see around me.

And I heard my name getting shouted, so I panicked and ran.

And then I got hit by a bus.

It felt as if I was underwater and I couldn't see,

but I could just about hear. Then I woke up on the floor.

I remember saying, "I have to get to work. I have to get to work."

And then the ambulance lady said, "You're not going anywhere.

"You're injured, we're taking you to a hospital

"cos you've been hit by a bus."

That's what made it clear that I had been hit.

SAM SCREAMS IN PAIN

It wasn't just the pain she remembers vividly.

It was very wet, it was raining, all my face was...

I just couldn't really breathe properly

cos the rain. It was cold, dirty, wet.

It wasn't very nice.

X-rays at the hospital showed the full extent of the break to her leg.

The bones had crossed next to each other sort of thing,

so it went like that instead of just broke.

So it made my leg four inches shorter than the other one

and it was very painful.

The operation to fix her leg lasted five hours.

It took me two weeks till I came out of hospital,

and about 11 weeks to recover fully.

I've got a metal rod in my leg, in my bone,

and it's going to be there for life. That's not coming out now.

Sam's now almost back to normal and has finally started her new job.

Despite all she's gone through,

she's just glad she's around to tell the tale.

All I've done is broke my leg and collarbone, so it's quite shocking.

The way it hit me, the speed it hit me, that I'm still here.

Hmm. Now, on Real Rescues,

we hear the dramatic recordings of actual 999 calls,

including this one about a builder who has suffered terrible injuries.

His left leg is trapped under a digger.

His injuries are so severe,

an expert medical team has to be flown to the scene.

His workmate made the emergency call.

We'll be catching up with Jim a little bit later

in the programme to find out how he is now.

I have to tell you, that call was made at exactly 11:11,

less than 10 minutes later, ambulance and fire crews were on the scene.

We have Steve and Stephen here from the fire service

and from the ambulance service.

Arriving at that scene, a very difficult environment

because you've got all the rubble, the unstable walls,

and you've got a guy in very serious pain.

Initially, when we first arrived,

our prime example was a dynamic risk assessment, which we quickly did,

and it became apparent that we had a partial collapse of the building.

Somebody trapped in the digger,

and there's always a chance of another collapse in progress.

So you've got both things on your mind.

Absolutely, so we quickly have to get a safety officer in place with a

tabard on to show that he's a safety officer, and then he's at all times

looking at the building and whether there's any further collapse.

OK. Your first thought must be towards the patient

and the fact that he's obviously in terrible pain at that stage.

Yeah.

When I arrived, it was obvious that his leg was quite severely trapped.

He was being supported by two of the fire fighters.

Which made it difficult for you to give him painkillers.

It was because we didn't want to move him at all.

We had to basically stabilise his location, the way he was,

before we could do anything.

Because we didn't want to take any risks in moving him.

The little blue crate that you saw down in that picture is what

you managed to put under him,

and your fire service guys managed to continue supporting him.

Did you have a go at trying to release him at that stage?

Yeah. The fire fighters stayed behind him at all times,

so he's there for approximately two hours of the duration.

We always try and have two plans.

Our first plan was to use low pressure airbags to put underneath

the digger to lift the digger off the tracks, but unfortunately that

didn't work at that time, so we have to try to go on to another plan,

which we did a bit later on.

OK. And plan B was to try and cut them away,

but interestingly, you didn't do that straight away because now that

you've got him settled you gave him some painkillers, but not much.

We gave him some pain relief.

We got a tourniquet on the leg to try and prevent any further bleed,

but the major problem we had was we were concerned that,

by actually releasing him from the tracks,

we might have a catastrophic haemorrhage.

And obviously that could be life-threatening.

-So that means life-threatening...

-Yeah, a major bleed, basically.

So you needed extra medical help then.

What we decided to do was, we needed a medical team on scene.

So that when we did move him

we could actually deal with any eventuality.

And by medical team, you are talking about anaesthetists...

Yeah, anaesthetists, doctors and possibly a surgeon.

We were, even at that stage,

we were still conscious that we wanted to try and get him out

completely, but we were concerned about possible major haemorrhage.

Also the possibility of an amputation as a result, to actually free it.

There was that at the back of our minds.

OK. So you sent the helicopter off, which has arrived,

away to get the medical team and bring them back.

-You use the time whilst they're away.

-We used the time.

We thought it would be a good idea... Our next trial was to

try and use special hydraulic rescue equipment, dedicated cutters

and a disc cutter,

which is normally used for heavy duty metal or even concrete.

So you practise that on the other side of the...

We practise on the other side, cos we had a bit of time.

We thought, "We have to practise, because it has to be right."

If it's not going to work,

it would only give more pressure to the casualty.

We did that and it did happen to work.

So you knew that, when the team came back, the MERIT team

as it is described, you'd be able to set about actually freeing him.

So you got him stabilised, bit of painkilling, they've got him

under control. The MERIT basics team are based at Bournemouth Hospital.

They attend major incidents, where casualties are either trapped

or unable to get to hospital in time to be treated.

They train for exactly this type of incident,

and we'll be talking to them, and meeting Jim himself, a little later.

Now it seems like lot of calls come in here from dads, whose wives,

mothers, whatever, their partner's about to give birth.

You've had loads of these.

You've delivered five babies in five months, haven't you?

When they call, what's it like? What do they say on the phone?

The first thing, they're so nervous, they just scream,

"The head's coming out! The head's coming out."

And obviously that makes me more nervous, and...

So five in five months. What do you routinely tell the dads?

Just sort of guide them through it.

You tell them, "Be ready to catch the baby."

Sort of talk them through like...names and things like that.

-"Do you know what sex it is?"

-So try to calm them down.

-Yeah.

I understand that you had one that was on their way to

-the hospital, were they?

-I had it in the back of a car.

She was on the way to hospital

and just went into labour on the way to hospital.

Where did she have her baby, then?

Literally the back of a car in a bus station bus stop.

And you've had letters from people as well, haven't you?

I had a really nice thank you letter, saying,

"Thank you for that."

They wanted to meet me, which was nice as well.

That's really lovely. And also, what about within here?

I gather it's sort of quite competitive.

When does it actually count that you've delivered the baby?

-When the baby's fully out.

-Before the ambulance crew come.

-Yes.

-So well done. Have you got the record so far?

I haven't, no. I think someone's got seven, or 12.

Five in five months, Alistair, is not bad. Thank you.

Now people working at heights have all sorts of health and safety

equipment at their disposal, not so kids when they climb trees for fun.

Quite right, too.

Occasionally things go wrong, though, and it is often left to

people like critical care doctor Paul Rees to pick up the pieces.

It's just before 10 at night, and ambulance doctor Paul Rees

is on a 999 call to an 18-year-old who's fallen out of a tree.

Apparently he was knocked out

and is now complaining that he's got poor vision.

I don't really know what that means,

other than he's definitely sustained a head injury.

We'll have to get there and have a look and assess him.

We know there's an ambulance crew running as well -

they might well beat us there.

It's not easy to find their way in the dark,

but the injured man's mates are waiting for them.

-How old's your mate?

-Pardon?

-How old's your mate? 18?

-Is he normally fit and well?

-Yes.

-What was he doing?

He was up the tree and the branch was loose and he fell out.

-OK. All right. Snapped.

-Snapped.

Troy is conscious and breathing.

Hiya. One of the doctors. How you doing?

-I'm all right, thanks.

-You feeling any better now?

Eh...a little bit. Memory's gone more than anything.

OK. All right. Fine. You got any pain in the neck at all?

-Erm...no.

-You look a bit pale and pasty to me.

You always a bit pale?

-No.

-No. OK. Chest all right? Take a deep breath for me.

Doesn't hurt when you breathe in? No?

Tummy all right? OK. All right.

Paul needs to see exactly where Troy fell.

-So this lowest one here.

-I think so, yeah.

-And he just sorted of dropped.

-Yeah, he come straight down.

I don't know if he hit the bottom of the tree.

OK. It's hard to know, isn't it?

He landed hard on this...

His mate Daniel saw Troy fall.

I think, given the mechanism of injury, he's fallen out of...

How high has he fallen? About 12 feet.

We should probably immobilise him,

do all the things we would do normally, and give him

a much more thorough once-over in the back of the ambulance, which

is somewhere in the streets around us, trying to get into this field.

Not entirely sure whether or not he's going to need to go to hospital.

I think my feeling at the moment is he probably is for a short period of observation.

Paul's keen to get Troy into the ambulance, out of cold.

But although it's very close, it's having trouble getting close enough.

The difficulty now is that we've come to the end of the public road,

the patient's about 200 metres inside a park,

cos we don't have any access to it.

So all the grass is all bollarded off so that you can't get in there

and park up.

Troy's friends head off to show them the way in.

Even though Troy got up and walked before help arrived,

he could still have spinal injuries.

They need to keep his neck and back as straight as possible.

So don't twist, we'll do it for you.

OK. And then, when you're ready, we'll just go down. OK?

Just gently lay you down.

That's it, good man.

Fantastic. Just going to strap you onto this, get you to hospital,

give you a once-over, hopefully kick you out later on, all right?

Cos you've had a bit of a bump in the head, it is

a fair old fall, just do all this as a precaution, all right?

OK. Good man.

Let's get a blanket on you, keep you nice and warm, all right?

In the dark, outside, it's a bit hard to say, hand on heart,

whether or not he's got any serious injuries.

So pop him up to the hospital, give him a once-over there,

and hopefully discharge him later on.

Still to come on Real Rescues,

more on the building site accident that sparked this dramatic 999 call.

We meet the man at the centre of that huge rescue operation.

And the woman who had two high-speed crashes on water

and lived to tell the tale.

She'll be describing exactly what happened just seconds after this.

Animals and roads don't mix,

so when a fox suddenly decides to cross the road,

some drivers like Ashley will go to great lengths to avoid hitting them.

The ambulance crew are heading to a call out in the east of the county.

It's a damp and dark morning.

The police are already on the scene, behind them a four by four,

which has taken a sudden detour off the road.

It's now resting at a precarious angle.

The driver has got herself out.

The only thing she's complaining of is pain in her arm.

-She said her right arm felt like pins and needles.

-OK.

It's cold. And when I got here, her left arm was warm,

her right arm was very cold.

-Sort of a slightly blue-y...

-Righty-ho.

Paramedic Karen Plumley needs to investigate.

So your shoulder, you've got pain in your shoulder.

Righty-ho. Any pains in your neck?

I can see you're moving quite freely around.

Yeah. No. My neck's fine.

Can I get you to just stand still, just for a minute?

-All of that's absolutely fine.

-Yeah, fine.

And the pain in your shoulder,

if you had to give me a score out of 10,

nought being pain-free, 10 being excruciating,

where would you put your pain?

-About three.

-About a three, so quite a mild pain.

It's clear that Ashley is a bit of an animal lover.

She just dropped her mum home after she had been cat-sitting.

And it turns out she's just as caring about wild animals.

In fact, it's why her car ended up like this.

So how did all this happen?

I was coming round the corner and a fox ran out,

and I didn't want to hit it so I swerved slightly and lost control.

-It looks like you were quite lucky.

-Yeah.

They don't reckon there's much damage done to it,

apart from the two tyres.

Let's go and sit you on the vehicle, out of harm's way.

Ashley is not the only one to escape relatively unscathed.

Her passenger joins her for the check-up in the ambulance.

Hello, chappy.

-What's this young man's name?

-Her name.

-Oh, her name.

-Josie.

-Josie.

Her collar says, "It's not easy being a princess."

You're making our vehicle all muddy.

Once the introductions are over,

Karen gives Ashley's shoulder a thorough examination.

Whereabouts does it actually hurt?

From about there downwards.

Righty-ho, so you've got quite good range of movement there,

-haven't you?

-Yeah.

Although Ashley and Josie have escaped almost unharmed,

it could have been a different story.

Just a few feet further on,

and she would have gone straight down into the bed of this stream.

It's quite a big, steep drop, isn't it?

So very lucky, aren't you?

So the driver survived and the dog's unhurt,

but what about the car, which is still stuck up the bank?

The only obvious damage is to the rear wheels and the tow bar,

but Ashley's worried that more damage could be done getting

it off the embankment.

Is it your baby?

Yes. And it's normally very good, but it just didn't stop.

I kept pumping the brakes and it just wouldn't stop,

it just kept sliding.

-It's only a bumper at the moment.

-No, it's the wheel as well.

Yeah...the wheel's going to need replaced. Oh! It's going to go.

-It's going to go. It's going to go.

-Don't. Don't you do dare go.

This is more... This is more upsetting than the accident.

No, she's fine. She's fine. You can look.

You can look. Look. She made it.

See that's why people have four-wheel drives, isn't it?

So they can drive up banks.

Ashley's most valued possessions have all survived,

and she's delighted the fox has too,

although she's well aware it's not always the best thing to do.

I would have felt devastated if I'd killed the fox.

It's my personal point of view. I will still swerve to avoid animals.

But I don't recommend that other people do!

It is difficult, isn't it, when there's an animal on the road?

Police advice is to try and avoid them if you can, but avoid swerving

round them if it puts yourself or other road users in danger. Nick.

Thank you. Now, let's go back to Jim's horrifying accident

on the building site.

A wall has collapsed, half-burying his leg,

and pushing it into the path of the revolving tracks of a moving digger.

He's trapped from the knee down.

This 999 call came in from a fellow site worker.

It's not just Jim's leg, but his life, in the balance.

It's become clear that the ambulance and fire crews on site would

need the highest level of medical expertise to save him.

I'm very pleased to say Jim has joined us here now, and with him

is Ed Meekers, who's also from the team that flew into rescue Jim.

First thing, obviously, how you doing?

I'm doing fine now. I've started getting there.

It's a long, hard road, but it's coming good now.

A horrific accident to be involved in...

I've been on building sites and...it's just not something

you expect to happen.

It was just a really unlucky catalogue of mishaps, really.

Yeah. It's extremely unlucky, really.

I mean, there's a billion to one chance of something like this

ever happening to somebody.

Because the rubble fell onto the JCB, onto the digger.

Yeah, and buried me in the rubble and started the tracks moving.

Extraordinary.

How soon did you realise that you had a very, very serious injury?

I realised pretty much straight away that things weren't looking

too good. I came to terms with it straight away...

-That you might lose...?

-I sort of...

I knew straight away that it wasn't going to be good,

and I thought I'd lost my leg - that was my first reaction.

We heard your colleague calling the emergency services there,

but you made a call too.

Yeah. I phoned my partner Debbie, just to tell her I loved her

and I told her I thought I'd lost my leg straight away,

-while I was trapped.

-Extraordinary.

Now I know for a fact she came down...went to the hospital

first and then came to the site.

Ed, you arrived on scene. Who have you got with you at that stage?

We've got members of the MERIT team.

We had an anaesthetist with us and we had a casualty consultant,

as well as a vascular surgeon.

That's the three of you there we can see in the green helmets.

That's right.

You've been delivered by helicopter then brought there by police car.

He's in a terrible state by the time you get there,

and they haven't been able to give him a lot in the way of painkilling.

No. That was one of the main things that we had to do,

more or less straight away. We gave him some ketamine,

which is a very strong analgesic painkiller, and also an anaesthetic.

And you also face a decision then, because his leg is so badly damaged

you have to decide whether you're going to go for an extraction

or an amputation.

Absolutely. That was the one thing we were called out for a possible

amputation. So, with our colleagues from the fire service,

we had to recce the site, we had to find out exactly how

he was trapped and the amount of damage.

At that stage, make up our mind.

And you made up your mind to try and rescue the leg.

Yes. We...the fire service were still trying to get him out,

to extract him, and to try and get the track off the digger.

So with the pain relief and the analgesia and the...anaesthetic

we could give him, that gave us a slightly longer window.

In the end, the damage was too bad to the leg.

The damage was, yeah, pretty bad.

Once you'd had the heavy painkiller,

that must have been something of a relief.

Yeah. Pretty much sort of instantly, within a couple of minutes,

I couldn't feel a thing. After that, I don't remember.

I remember fully the two hours before, when I was trapped.

But as soon as I had that pain relief, after that,

I pretty much can't remember anything.

Listen, you don't have to answer this,

but what...where are you, in yourself, now,

with the loss of a leg? Cos it's something to come to terms with.

Someone like yourself, who's a builder,

who's a fit man, who's out there.

It's really hard work, but you just have to persevere.

I just consider myself lucky to be alive,

and that is the main thing, really.

It's not about being unlucky to lose a leg,

it's being lucky to be alive.

So you have to think about it that way, rather than the opposite.

And that's the way you get through it.

Obviously you have your bad days, but then you have the good, so...

And the people that came and flew to your rescue...

Oh, they're absolutely amazing, they're so professional,

they know exactly what they're doing.

All the aftercare, as well, you get.

All these people that make up the NHS,

and all the ambulance service and fire crews are absolutely amazing...

And so say all of us. Lovely.

Thank you for coming in and chatting to us, Jim.

Thank you very much, and say thanks to your team, too.

I want to give you a quick update on what we were talking about earlier.

Julian, this little toddler who had something up their nose,

what's been going on? You're getting somewhere with this, aren't you?

Well, we think so. We've not been as successful as we would have hoped.

We had somebody on scene with the patient's mother, so we're

giving instructions to try something which is called parent's kiss.

So, with a young baby, you occlude one nostril, the good nostril.

You block one nostril.

Block the good one, a short, sharp blow into the mouth,

and, more often than not, it will propel the foreign object out.

But it hasn't worked.

It hasn't worked, and I think it's possibly because it's popcorn,

as opposed to something smooth, like a bead.

-Popcorn.

-Popcorn up the nostril.

OK.

So the emergency care practitioner has tried as well, I understand.

One of the colleagues has been out,

he can't do it either, so unfortunately they've won

themselves a trip up to the A&E department.

Oh, poor little thing, just because of some popcorn.

I know, it's very sad.

Thank you. Let's talk about something completely different.

To get the best outcome after a stroke, diagnosis needs to be fast.

When paramedics were called out to an elderly man who had suddenly

lost his ability to speak,

they know they have to find out quickly what's wrong with him.

Ambulance crew Dave Gardiner and Trevor Seaton are on a 999 call

to a 73-year-old man, who they think may have had a stroke.

If it's a stoke,

obviously we have to get him to the hospital quick as possible.

Due to the fact it's quite a debilitating illness.

Portsmouth Hospital,

being one of the leading stroke units in the country.

A diagnosis will be more difficult because he's a diabetic.

He could be having a hypoglycaemic attack,

where his blood sugar levels have fallen dangerously low.

If it is a hypo, we can give him

sugars or perhaps have to put an IV line in, give him IV glucose,

just to bring his sugar level up, and then the difference

you'll see in someone within a few minutes is quite remarkable, really.

Raymond has been out shopping all morning.

His problem started just after having lunch with his wife Helen

and her mother. Helen was quick to spot that he wasn't his normal self.

I suddenly realised he wasn't speaking,

he was just grunting and making noises.

He wasn't....he wasn't completing his sentences.

OK. Any other change at all?

Um...no. He's walking around all right.

He doesn't seem to realise that there is anything wrong.

Raymond's mouth is dropping on one side,

which could be a sign of a stroke.

Give me a smile.

OK.

Put his hands out.

Can you grip my hands?

Pull me towards you.

Push me away.

Can you hold your hands out for a while?

Raymond is struggling to answer even the simplest questions.

How do you feel?

Well... I do...

Raymond's usually very chatty and articulate,

but now he can't complete his sentences.

Something is clearly not right.

Pull them towards you.

They have to consider if his diabetes could be the cause of the problem.

We checked his blood sugars and they're 12.1,

so that's...it's raised, but it's not a concerned raise in any way.

So it's possible that he has had a CVA or a small TIA,

which is a mini-stroke.

They need to get Raymond to hospital,

where he can be more accurately diagnosed.

They might do a CT scan on the head, see if there's been a bleed.

If he's complaining of any headaches, what sort of headaches

have come on, if he's got any sort of vision deficiencies or anything.

How do you feel?

-How do I feel...?

-Any headaches?

-No.

-None at all.

What's your vision like now?

It's...it's....what... I can't believe it.

Raymond has been complaining of being very tired for the last few days.

He has a history of heart problems.

As soon as he's settled in the ambulance, he's wired up for an ECG.

You always wear a tie?

Well...

-Only on special occasions, like going shopping.

-Yes.

All the time he's working, Trevor tries to keep Raymond chatting.

-So do you remember going down the shops?

-Yes.

I...

I can't remember.

-We went to the...

-Struggling, aren't you?

No, no, no...no.

I went to the...to the library.

I went to the...oh, my God...

Raymond's memory is clearly not what it should be.

Just relax, mate, don't worry about it. It'll come back to you.

Yes.

The ECG is showing up an irregular heartbeat,

but this could just be part of his usual condition.

It does look like he has a...an illness or a heart rhythm called AF.

Atrial fibrillation, which basically is when the heart flutters,

if you like. And...

It can cause little clots, and if one of the clots has moved

up into the brain, it could cause ischemia in the brain,

so he could be getting the confusion from that point of view.

The 12-lead ECG is showing more areas for concern.

Where your electrical heart, the electrical system in your heart,

comes from the top and works its way down.

It then splits down the bottom.

And basically, the right-hand side in this gentleman's is

a little bit slower than the left-hand side -

to conduct the electricity to the ends.

So it's called right bundle branch block.

But you already knew you had that, didn't you, sir?

That's one of your old ones, yeah.

But, yeah, it's irregular as well.

So right bundle branch with a bit irregularity.

The hospital have received the results of the ECG ahead of

Ray's arrival.

He was then assessed by the specialist stroke team.

An MRI scan later revealed that Ray had suffered a mini-stroke.

Now in the glamorous world of powerboating speed is king,

but racing on water is high risk.

Once wrong move and the crew can hit the water at speeds that make

it feel like hitting concrete.

Shelley Jory-Leigh has done that twice this summer.

She is a top powerboat racer. I'm glad to see that you're OK.

Talk us through what happened in your first accident this summer.

How fast were you going, first of all?

We were running at about 89 mile an hour in the first accident.

We were running second in the World Championships,

so we were really pushing it.

It was a pure racing accident, gunning it into a corner

a little bit too fast, just lost control of the back of the boat...

And spun out.

As my throttle man fell out of the boat, he pulled the throttles back,

which enables the boat to...it's like a handbrake turn, really.

Right, and is that why he went out then,

or is that because he hit a wave?

We actually hit...we were really pushing it.

We hit a wave, which actually spun the back of the boat out.

He's got his hands on the throttle

and his other hand's holding on, but the g-force of that, it just.

And you can see...he goes over the top of you, doesn't he?

Yeah, unfortunately taking my head onto

the console of the boat at the same time.

But, thank God. Good crash helmet, life jacket.

And also, he was wearing that orange helmet,

so the other boats avoided him as well.

You had a second accident, which was actually even worse than that one.

We've got pictures of the aftermath.

I know. 15 years of racing and two accidents in one month.

The second accident was...freak.

The boat just went into a wave and shattered on impact,

which just shouldn't have happened.

I mean, there will be a big investigation of why that happened.

We were running in a straight line at the time.

-You know...

-And you're really very seriously bruised there.

How bad were your injuries?

I had a broken nose, severe head injuries,

which I'm still suffering from.

When you say you're "suffering", what sort of thing...?

Headaches... I have to sleep a lot...

No TV, no computers...but the rescue people at the time

of the accident were just unbelievable.

We have the Bergamot Scuba Angels,

who are constantly watching our racing. As well as all of our

safety equipment on board, they are absolutely monitoring every point.

So they are doctors who are also in scuba diving kit, are they?

Yeah. They're medics and doctors, but also qualified divers,

which is fantastic.

When you're dealing with water and speed, that's exactly what you need.

They were just there. When you say "Scuba Angels",

they are my angels.

I'm glad to see that you're OK. Your nose is now fixed as well, isn't it?

Hopefully you'll still feel a bit better as well and, please,

-I hope you don't have to get rescued again.

-Thank you.

Absolutely extraordinary. I did that once, powerboat racing,

and easily the most uncomfortable thing I have ever done in my life.

A runaway car heading down a hill with no-one inside

- a frightening sight - even worse when it's your own car.

That's what happened to Kim, who we'll meet in a moment.

Portsdown Hill is well-known for its views

and steep hills overlooking Portsmouth Harbour.

Walkers come here regularly with their dogs.

They leave their cars at the top

and get a good run over the grass down the hill.

That's what dog owner Kim did earlier.

She parked up as usual and set off on her walk,

but it didn't all go according to plan.

Something very unusual has happened.

Kim's car, seemingly of its own accord,

has left its parking space, rolled onto the grass,

and continued for a couple of hundred yards,

finally coming to a halt in bushes up against a tree.

Now vehicle recovery man Del and the police have been called out.

Kim has already been picked up by her husband and gone home.

Del's been left the keys to help recover the vehicle.

As they go down to investigate,

they're following the tracks the car has made on the damp grass.

Is this a case of no handbrake being used?

Blimey. Very lucky.

Well and truly buried in there, isn't it?

It turns out the runaway car has come to

a halt at the edge of a chalk cliff - a vertical drop of over 100 feet.

Five, ten feet that way and it would have ended up going all the

way down, into Carmarthen Avenue and maybe down onto Haverton Road.

Then Del makes a discovery that deepens

the mystery as to how the car got to be here.

Because the car is an automatic, the front wheels must have been locked,

so instead of rolling, somehow it's skidded all the way down the hill.

As it was sliding rather than free-wheeling,

at least its speed would have been kept in check.

Well, that's a write-off, though.

Del's got quite a job on his hands to get the car back up

the slippery slope.

I've just phone our control room at Fareham.

They said if we get the four by four here, one of the bosses has

got a four by four, and then we're going to come across the top

of the hill at the angle, come back to it here and then pull it out,

tow it up on the four by four and then put it on the back of my truck,

hopefully back to Fareham - that's the plan.

Fingers crossed and all that.

How the car started its long slide down remains unclear,

but it's certainly lucky it ended on the tree rather than over the cliff.

Well, here she is. You were quite surprised by all of that.

That is where it could have ended up, though.

-Is it?

-Yeah.

-Oh, my God.

-So what happened?

Erm...just went up there to walk my dog and...

Got out the car and just was walking along,

and I sort of fell, cos it was quite wet and

windy up there, and I sort of turned around and saw a car on the hill,

and just thought, "That shouldn't be allowed",

because of all the dog walkers.

It appeared to be driving down the hill.

Yes. And I thought, "Oh, there's people walking their dogs here."

And then I saw it was my car.

I just looked and thought, "That looks like my car."

They were clearly having a bit of a laugh, weren't they?

Hmm. I wasn't laughing at the time.

I bet you weren't laughing. I'm glad you're laughing now.

What do you think happened?

Do you think you forgot to put the handbrake on, possibly?

-Possibly.

-Could that have happened?

Possibly. The dog could have nudged it as I was taking him out.

I think I'd rather think of that, than...

But, yeah, I could have...I could have.

The really lucky...they said it's an automatic,

so perhaps it's going down the hill a little more slowly.

Yeah, that's good.

You must have been relieved it didn't hit anybody.

Oh, gosh, yeah.

When it hit the tree, I was just so relieved that it stopped.

I was just frozen to the spot...

I couldn't even look around to see if there would be anyone there,

I was just frozen to the spot, watching it go down.

So you're OK, the dog was OK, how was the car?

Did he get it out of there? Did it eventually get out?

-The car got out.

-How is it now?

It's OK, yeah. They had it for three months!

And how is your handbrake?

Are you using it a bit more often?

Well and truly...put on every time I park the car,

especially going up the hill.

Brilliant. Lovely to meet you. Thanks very much.

Now, before we finish, I thought you might like to meet Jim's other

half Debbie, who he called from the site.

That was a pretty nasty call to receive.

Awful.

But how's he doing now?

Amazingly well. Brilliant, Yeah, really proud of him.

And listen, you were due to get married, weren't you?

-We were.

-Just after the accident, which you had to put off.

So is it back on?

It's on, we're just waiting for Jim to walk, really.

Is that the idea, you want to walk down the aisle.

Yeah. As soon as I'm sorted, up and about and walking,

-that'll be the first thing on the agenda.

-OK.

Now listen, also, since the accident,

you've done a lot of raising money for the air ambulance.

Yeah. A couple of friends of mine, Barry and Sandra, between us all,

we got together and did a charity fun day.

Which we did last Sunday,

and we managed to raise £1,770 for air ambulance.

Why is it so important to you?

It's just really a thank you to all the people that came out,

it's really emotional.

It still gets you, I can see that now.

Look. Lovely to meet you. Good luck with the wedding.

You're able to give him a hug, by the way, don't worry about that.

Good luck with everything in the future.

There you go, so that's wrapped up. What happened with the popcorn, have they got it out?

No, they're still there. They still haven't got it out.

I've just got an update from Julian.

They're not on their way to the hospital either.

We did tell you that we'd get you all the information.

-Was it sweet or salted?

-I've asked. They don't know.

I said we'd be able to bring you the information.

We haven't been able to bring you all the information.

You're from news, you ought to be able to work this stuff out.

-They don't know.

-OK.

-I'd tell you if I did.

An extraordinary Real Rescues today, don't you think?

-We'll have more soon.

-Goodbye.

-See you. Bye-bye.

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