>>> A PATIENT'S STORY

 

Maree thankful for GladWrap and speed of rescue helicopter

The late January evening milking for the 320-odd cows had just been completed, and Maree Atkinson and the farmhand were washing out the milk-lines.

They were working on a herringbone pit shed at Otamarakau, south of Te Puke, and as usual, they were using almost-boiling water mixed with acid. As Maree was hosing out the pit she walked beneath the header tank containing all the hot water just as it broke open, dumping the scalding contents all down her back.

“I was wearing a hat and some wet-weather gear which protected me a bit,” she remembers, “but most of it went right down my back, from my neck to my tail-bone.
“It really hurt – it’s been explained to me as like really severe sunburn.”

Maree says she got the farm-hand to hose her down with cold water from the shed hose for five minutes, and when she felt better she decided to walk to her house, about 100 metres away.

“I thought I’d be OK, but my back looked like Rotorua,” she says. “When I came home my 15-year-old son ran cold water in the bath and began pouring that over me, but I was starting to feel dizzy by then, so I got him to ring Craig.”

Her partner, Craig Gibbs, had been out fishing, but he was only minutes away, and raced home.

“She was in a pretty bad state when I got home, and she was starting to go into shock,” says Craig. “I phoned 111. They were going to send an ambulance from Tauranga, and I told them there were some paramedics at Pukehina, which is a lot closer.”

Several paramedics arrived within a very short time, and Craig says they “immediately took charge and knew exactly what to do. They were brilliant.”

He believes one of them phoned for the Trustpower TECT Rescue Helicopter, based in Tauranga, while the others tended to Maree.

She says they covered her back with GladWrap from the kitchen, put her back in the bath and poured a saline solution over her continuously.

“Putting that GladWrap on me was amazing,” she says. “They told me it stops the air getting at the nerve-endings, and it certainly made a lot of difference to the pain.”

The rescue helicopter, piloted by Liam Brettkelly, arrived within minutes, and a doctor and paramedic aboard decided she should be taken directly to the Waikato Hospital burns unit in Hamilton.

“It was only a few extra minutes of flying compared to going to Tauranga Hospital, and Waikato has a proper burns department,” says Maree.

Says Craig: “That pilot was absolutely amazing – he put that machine down in this little gap between the house and a big tree and some power wires. They are so experienced, those guys.”

“The trip to Waikato took less than 25 minutes,” says Maree, “and they talked to me the whole time, giving me the thumbs-up or thumbs-down, always telling me what was happening all the time.

“I was in hospital only 48 hours, and I’m very lucky really – there’s no scarring, just a bit of discolouration of the skin.”

Both Maree and Craig say it is impossible to put a value on rescue helicopters in such circumstances.

“Road ambulances can get stuck in traffic, and helicopters don’t,” says Maree. “Helicopters are far faster, and this one took me straight to the best help. You can’t be without them in farming areas, especially when there are accidents in places where cars and other vehicles can’t get to – and there’s simply the speed of it all.”