FIGHTING BACK
Boxer making ‘astonishing’ recovery after she’s rushed to hospital in critical condition
A BOXER rushed to hospital in a critical condition with a brain bleed after an amateur fight has made an “astonishing” recovery.
Cara Owen, 21, fell ill after her fight with Ameretta Evans at the Market Mayhem event in Caernarfon on Saturday.
Her uncle Chris Pritchard, who organised the mixed martial event (MMA) held at the Market Hall, revealed that Cara is no longer in a critical condition, was “sitting up and chatting” and the first thing she said when she regained consciousness was that she wants to “get back in the ring”.
The former Ysgol Syr Hugh Owen pupil complained of feeling unwell minutes after winning her bout.
Medics and an off duty paramedic rushed to her aid suspecting that the fighter had suffered a head injury
She was rushed to Ysbyty Gwynedd where doctors found a brain bleed and she was transferred to a specialist trauma unit in Stoke Hospital where she underwent surgery to remove a blood clot.
Her condition was so serious she would have been airlifted but the weather conditions were judged to be too bad.
But the supremely fit fighter, who also works as an MMA instructor at her uncle’s martial arts school in Caernarfon, recovered quickly.
Chris said: “She has astonished medics with her progress following the operation, it usually takes at least 24 hours after an operation to be sitting up and talking, but Cara was chatting away after just 12. It’s because she’s such a strong person and is physically very fit.”
She has won five of her six amateur bouts and has been training with her uncle since the age of three. “We were with her yesterday and she was cracking jokes and the first thing she said when she woke up was that she wanted to get back in the ring, but as a family we aren’t very keen.”
‘It’s been very frightening’ “It’s been very frightening, and it’s very lucky that an off duty paramedic took control when Cara around 15 minutes after the fight started complaining of a headache and said she needed a lie down, and complained of feeling very hot,” he added.
“We will don’t quite know what happened on Saturday night, how she received this injury as she didn’t seem to have been caught by the other fighter.
“But we’ve got footage of it so will be reviewing it in due course.
“We’ve been running these amateur fights for 10 years and it’s the first time anything like this has happened luckily.”