A Dulwich woman has recounted how a freak accident involving a folding ladder left her foot “swinging by a thread”.
Christine Burke, 62, had recently moved into a her Lordship Lane Estate flat with her three children.
On October 18 2003, she was using a metal ladder to remove polystyrene tiles from the ceiling.
She was two rungs up and when she stepped off, it snapped shut around her ankle, severing her fibula and tibia.
“It was like a bloody guillotine”, said the grandmother-of-five who works as a support worker looking after vulnerable people.
“I started trying to walk to the balcony shouting ‘help, help’ but my foot was swinging about inside its trainer! I thought – this can’t be happening.”
Neighbours, who “were all in shock” dialled 999 and paramedics treated Christine before taking her to an air ambulance that had landed on a nearby green.
Christine still has a photo of the air ambulance, taken by a neighbour, but can barely remember it. “I was off my face on sedatives by then”, she explained.
She was flown to Royal London Hospital where an “amazing” surgeon sewed her foot back on.
“I thought I’d never recover – the doctors were worried about me losing my foot altogether. Because it was such a severe thing I kept getting infections.
“There was another guy on the ward whose whole leg had gone purple. That could have happened to me but it didn’t – I’m so lucky.”
What followed was weeks, then months, then years, of long, hard recovery, punctuated by constant hospital visits.
For six months, Christine had to have her leg elevated, in a cage, and couldn’t move from her living room sofa.
“I was crying all the time, having to use a wheelchair and throwing up morphine tablets”, she said.
She says the nerves in her foot can “still drive me mad” and she sometimes suffers from a burning sensation.
But almost twenty years later, after constant physio, her remarkable recovery means she is able to walk and even run for the bus.
The offending ladder was immediately thrown away. Christine considered suing the manufactures but had to give up when she couldn’t get through to them.