Byron Smith, accompanied by his wife, Louise, visited the Blue Light Hub in Milton Keynes recently to meet some of the team that saved his life when he suffered a serious head injury in August 2022.
Byron had been out with a friend and they were visiting their favourite pub. Although they considered it as their ‘local’ and were Saturday night regulars, it wasn’t actually that local to where the two friends lived in Newport Pagnell, so they had travelled – as they usually did – on their electric scooters into Milton Keynes.
Understandably, given the seriousness of his subsequent injuries, Byron’s recollections of what exactly happened are not clear. He has no memory of the week leading up to the accident, nor the month afterwards. He has, however, been told that he left the pub early and alone – leaving his friend behind – which was unusual and out-of-character. A short time later, Byron was found by a passerby on the floor, and with serious head injuries, next to his scooter in Willen. The member of the public immediately called 999.
Paramedic, Neil Andrews, and emergency care assistant, Natalya Whiteford, arrived on scene first and were quickly backed-up by paramedic team leader, Paul Evans, due to the serious head injury that Byron had sustained that was making him extremely combative. A significant blow to the head can often leave a patient confused and agitated and can be a sign of a traumatic brain injury.
“However Byron had fallen”, remembers Paul, “his head had landed on a square, metal bollard – designed to ensure larger motor vehicles couldn’t use the cycle path. And hitting that had caused the very serious head injury.”
Following initial treatment from the team at the scene, Byron was then taken to the nearby Milton Keynes University Hospital where he was stabilised, and put into an induced coma before being transferred to the major trauma centre at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. He spent four days there before continuing his treatment back at Milton Keynes.
Unfortunately, his recovery and rehabilitation has been a long and difficult journey, including catching MRSA – a serious bacterial infection that is resistant to many antibiotics – as well as undergoing a craniotomy; a procedure that involves the surgical removal of part of the bone from the skull to expose the brain. A metal plate was finally put in place to cover the gap in his skull in March 2024.
During his long rehabilitation an incident occurred that Byron thinks gives a strong clue to what might have caused his original accident.
He says: “A friend came to visit me at home and as he was leaving, I had come to the door to see him off. As he made his way down the garden path, I fainted backwards into the house – due, it turned out – to having extremely low blood pressure. It’s made me think that the same thing could have happened back in the summer of 2022.”
“I had come off my e-scooter once or twice before and they go at quite a speed. As a result, I had serious grazes and bruising to my hands, arms and legs. But that night the only injury I had was the head injury – there wasn’t a scratch on me anywhere else at all. Therefore, I now think that what might have happened was that I perhaps began feeling unwell in the pub, so left earlier than usual and alone. I then started to ride the scooter back home but stopped and began walking when I continued to feel unwell – it was still on a good charge when I was found – and as I was found at the top of a small hill, I think that I might have suffered a similar episode to the fainting I later had at home. Except this time, my head landed smack on the metal bollard as opposed to a carpeted floor!”
Natalya and Paul were delighted to host Byron and Louise at the Blue Light Hub in Milton Keynes that SCAS shares with Thames Valley Police and Buckinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service. They were joined by Georgie Burge, emergency despatcher at SCAS, who represented the control room team that responded to the original 999 call when Byron was found on the floor, and Neil joined remotely via VideoLink having subsequently moved to Cornwall.
The team spent an hour with Byron, providing some answers to the many questions he still had regarding the incident and the treatment that he received.
“It was lovely to see Byron”, said Natalya, “as Neil, Paul and myself really didn’t think he was going to pull through at the time due to the terrible injury he had sustained. So to see him able to walk in unaided today was incredible, and we all wish him well with his ongoing recovery.”
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