NHS WORKER ENDED UP IN HOSPITAL... ‘DUE TO THANK YOU SPITFIRE’!
Gran, 61, missed flypast after breaking ankle racing to see iconic plane
AN NHS worker has had to undergo surgery to her right ankle after falling while the ‘Thank You NHS’ Spitfire flew over her home.
The iconic Second World War plane took off from Cambridgeshire on August 30 and flew over hospitals in Stoke-on-trent and South Cheshire.
When nan-of-two Lynn Teague heard the plane near her son’s home in Basford, she rushed across the street to watch it with her grandchildren, Joel, aged three, and Nova, aged two.
The IT business change support manager, who has worked for the NHS for 21 years, fell over and fractured her right ankle before she got to see the plane fly over her home.
The 61-year-old, who now has plates, pins, bolts and screws in her ankle, said: “Across the road from me lives my son, his wife and my two grandchildren.
“We were going to look at the Spitfire together as it flew over. When I came outside my front door I could hear it in the distance and I saw my son standing at his front door with the two kids.
“I said to him go out the back because we will be better watching it on the back lawn. I rushed across the road, I wasn’t running. I followed them out to the back door and I don’t know how but I tripped down the back step.
“It was quite horrendous. I heard a crack and felt the extreme pain and then shouted for them to call an ambulance because I could see the state of my foot.
“We never actually got to see the Spitfire and the poor kids were traumatised, it was awful.
“I was in horrendous pain and have got a really bad fracture. I dislocated my ankle, I also have got a trimalleolar fracture with displacement. It’s the sort of trauma that you usually have from a motorcycle accident.
“I had to go to hospital and had an operation. Now I’ve probably got more metal work in there than the Spitfire.”
After sharing what had happened with staff at the Royal Stoke University hospital where she had the operation – she was called ‘the Spitfire lady’.
Due to the fracture she cannot walk without using a frame and getting help.
Lynn added: “Considering the severity of it, the staff were really upbeat and so nice and kind. It was made into a bit of a joke like ‘here is the Spitfire lady’. They couldn’t believe the story that I hurt myself watching something that was going to thank us for our work during Covid-19.
“When I was put onto the ward this lovely clinical support worker said ‘Oh you’ve got the window seat right by the helicopters’. Then she said ‘If you had been here earlier you would have seen the Spitfire go over’. I just laughed. She asked what’s funny and I said it’s because of the Spitfire that I am here.
“I’m sure I’ll probably see it other times but I am not going to try and run towards it next time, if I see it I will just look up.”