As she lay pinned under a runaway car with one leg hanging off and the other smashed, Pam Greaves apologised to the medics for wasting their time, and inquired anxiously about the whereabouts of her money and the fate of her buy-one-get-one-free yoghurts.
Is the money safe? Are the yoghurts spilt?
She was airlifted to Birmingham’s Selly Oak Hospital by air ambulance and spent two days there in intensive care.
Mrs Greaves was warned her leg might have to be amputated. But she was having none of that.
“You’re not taking my leg,” she told the hospital. So they did not.
Three-and-a-half years on, Mrs Greaves, 67, has made a recovery, but not a full one. She cannot walk far and the broken shoulder she suffered restricts her arm movement, while the trauma of that day seems to have accelerated the onset of other physical troubles.
“I’m very bitter,” she says when she recalls the accident.
In contrast, the air ambulance comes in for high praise.
“They were excellent,” she said. “I think they saved my life.”
Although the air ambulance played a key role, it was one of those cases in which the extra on-the-spot medical skills of a flying doctor on the helicopter would have been of great benefit to Mrs Greaves as she lay trapped.
Mrs Greaves had been shopping in Much Wenlock, where she lived at the time, when disaster came out of the blue, on July 23, 2003.
“I was going to my daughter’s, who had had triplets and I was going daily to help her,” she said. “The sales were on and I had taken quite a bit of money into town. I had bought buy-one-get-one-free in the shape of yoghurts for the little ones.
“I was walking past the Much Wenlock filling station. A gentleman rushed in to get a newspaper, but did not put his handbrake on. I did not hear the car coming. A girl in the filling station shop shouted me, but I did not hear her above the traffic. The car hit me in the back and trapped me underneath.”
The car, a Mercedes saloon with a foot-operated parking brake, had rolled backwards about 30-40 yards before being brought to a halt by a low wall.
Mrs Greaves cannot recall everything about what happened next, but does not remember being in pain.
“I kept mithering to the poor ambulance people about my money, my handbag, and my yoghurts.”
After she was released from under the car, she was flown to Selly Oak Hospital, where she was to spend the next three months. One consequence of the accident was she had to move from her four-bedroom house in Much Wenlock into something more manageable.
She and husband Tony now live in a bungalow in Shrewsbury.
Mr Greaves said: “The driver went to court on a charge the police called ‘quitting’, which I had never heard of before. I went as a spectator. He pleaded guilty and was fined £230 and had to pay £40 court costs.”
Mrs Greaves did get some compensation.
“I was paid a £10,000 interim payment, but haven’t had another penny,” she said. “Out of that I gave the air ambulance £1,000.”
Mr Greaves was a retained firefighter at Much Wenlock, but he had to give that role after the accident.
“I actually did a sponsored parachute jump before the accident with a fire service colleague from Much Wenlock in aid of the air ambulance,” he said. “In the course of my job as a firefighter we met up with air ambulance crews on a number of occasions when we went to road accidents. I have a great admiration for them.”
And one last thing – Mrs Greaves’s money was safe, and Mr Greaves delivered the yoghurts.
- The Shropshire Star has this week launched an appeal to raise £70,000 to provide a flying doctor for the air ambulance service – read more here.
- Click here for a printable donation form.
By Toby Neal – tneal@shropshirestar.co.uk
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