Moving house is meant to be an exciting moment filled with ideas and possibilities. But for dad-of-three Scott Lee it almost ended in tragedy when a freak accident nearly cost him his life.
Barely 24 hours after getting the keys, the 30-year-old was putting up a banner to celebrate his wife's birthday when he put his foot through a pane of glass, severing his Achilles and cutting a main artery supplying blood to his leg. Neighbours said his scream in pain was so loud that they thought someone was being attacked.
When Scott discovered he was unable to stem the bleeding, he hobbled down the road in a desperate attempt to seek help. Luckily a qualified nurse happened to pass by in her car and saw him in distress, placing one of his wife's dressing gowns tightly around his leg before relatives could take him to hospital.
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Following a four-and-a-half hour operation at Swansea's Morriston Hospital, Scott is now on the road to recovery but he is unable to work as a forklift driver for at least six weeks, meaning all the money they'd set aside for renovation work on their new "fixer-upper" house in Birchgrove will have to go towards paying the mortgage.
Recalling the horrific events of Saturday, August 20, Scott said: "On the Thursday I completed on the house and got the keys. We got in and started pulling the doors and skirting boards out as I was re-doing the house from top to bottom myself. The beauty [of the house] is the fact my mother-in-law lives four doors down, my wife's gran and auntie live next door, and then there's us. We are all together as a family.
"On the Friday I'd put all the glass doors out into the front garden and my brother was going to remove them and take them to the tip. On the Saturday it was my wife Paige's 30th birthday and we were planning on going to Oakwood with the kids. I woke up at 8.30am in my in-laws' house and walked over to the new house, with just my sliders on my feet, to put a banner up on the front to surprise her.
"As I went to put the banner on the window with a scissors and Sellotape, I had to lean across so I stood on one of the doors which I'd stacked up. But the scissors slipped out of my hand. I instinctively readjusted my feet and my right foot went straight through a pane of glass."
WARNING: VERY GRAPHIC IMAGES BELOW
Rather than keeping his right foot where it was, as an "automatic reaction" Scott pulled it out of the glass and severed an artery in the process. "The blood squirted across to my left leg. I looked down at the gash and it was huge. I had to hop a small wall to try and get the four doors down to my wife," he added.
"I made it two houses down and screamed for her and thankfully she came out. I got drained really, really quickly and I felt like I was going to die. I've seen too many TV programmes where people had cut an artery, bled out, and not lived to tell the tale. I told my wife and my kids that I loved them as I wasn't sure if I'd see them again."
Miraculously, within minutes of the accident happening mental health nurse Laura Hayes was driving past and saw Scott and his young family in distress. She said: "I was running late to take my daughter to her horse riding lesson when, by pure fluke, I saw him. I wondered what on earth was going on, but when I saw this river of blood I knew I had to help. He was bleeding so heavily that 30 minutes later he wouldn't have been with us."
Meanwhile another neighbour came to Scott's aid and grabbed his first aid kit. Laura was able to raise the severely injured man's leg and put proper dressings on it and a tourniquet to stem the bleeding. "My wife was calling 999 while all this was going on, but they said it would take half an hour to get to me," Scott added. "My in-laws managed to chuck me in a car and get me straight to hospital."
Surgeons at Morriston Hospital carried out an operation to fix Scott's Achilles and his leg has been put in plaster. However there is a chance he may never walk properly again and have a permanent limp. "When I was operated on I thought they'd need to amputate my foot. When I woke up the first thing I did was look down to see if it was still there," he said. "Everyone who came to my aid – they're my heroes."
Scott, who cannot put weight on his right leg for six weeks and has had a bed moved into the living room at his in-laws' home, will need six to 12 weeks of physiotherapy. The forklift driver for B&Q said while he's incredibly lucky to still be here his dreams of doing up his house will have to wait. He added that he is only entitled to statutory sick pay, which means all the money saved for the renovations will now go to pay the mortgage.
Days after the accident Laura decided to set up a GoFundMe page to help "alleviate pressures" on the family. To donate please go here. "I just feel so sorry for them. Having purchased their first family home this should have been an exciting time for them but it has turned into a nightmare," she said. "Scott may need further surgeries, there are lots of unknowns from this accident, and stress levels are high."
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