Saved by a wiggling toe ... student set to have life support turned off
A GRADUATE left in a coma after a car crash wiggled her toe moments before doctors were set to turn off her life- support machine. Sam hemming, 22, was given no chance of recovery when she suffered devastating head injuries in a motorway smash.
after 19 days in hospital, doctors confirmed her parents’ worst fears and declared she was brain dead.
But as they were about to switch off her life support machine a medic accidentally brushed her big toe with an icecold wipe – and it moved.
Signs of brain activity were then picked up and doctors at university hospital Coventry were convinced they had to keep Miss hemming alive. Just eight weeks after coming so close to losing her fight for life, Miss hemming has now been discharged and is back at the family home in hereford.
She has had to learn how to talk and walk again after suffering brain damage but still hopes to fulfil her dream of becoming a solicitor.
Miss hemming said: ‘I can’t remember the crash at all but I know I was coming home at the time. I can remember graduating and that’s it really.
‘When I look at the pictures of me in the coma it seems unreal and when I hear that my toe saved me it’s amazing.’
The graduate, who got a 2:1 in law at Bangor university, was on her way to Birmingham with her boyfriend Tom Curtis on July 20 when he crashed on the M6. Mr Curtis, 21, escaped with minor injuries but Miss hemming was thrown through the windscreen as the car flipped and hit her head on the motorway’s central reservation.
airlifted to hospital, she underwent six hours of surgery before she was placed in a medically-induced coma.
The life-support machine was switched off and on three times to see if Miss hemming could breathe unaided, but her toe moved before it was turned off for a fourth and final time.
days later she was given a tracheotomy and when her lifesupport machine was turned off again, she could breathe on her own. One side of her brain was left dead, but she has learnt to walk and talk using the ‘other’ side. her mother Carol, 44, has quit her job renting bouncy castles to care for her daughter.
She said: ‘ It was amazing. She had literally come back from the dead. If she hadn’t wiggled her toe she wouldn’t be here today. Because of the steps she has taken, she is a walking miracle.’
Mrs hemming, who has three other children, added: ‘They usually give a patient three attempts to see if they can breathe on their own before switching it [life support] off for good and letting the patient die, but before they switched it off for a final time one of her specialists said her big toe wiggled.
‘doctors are totally in shock. You see the specialised surgeons, paramedics and police and they look at Sammy and you see their mouths fall open.’
‘She’s a walking miracle’