The 18-year-old daughter of a woman killed in a freak lightning strike while on a beach has paid tribute to her mum. Emily and her 15-year-old brother were with mum Daniella DiMambro on a backpacking trip in Croatia when a storm broke out.
The three had visited the city of Dubrovnik then went island-hopped before reaching Split, Croatia's second-largest city. Emily told NottinghamshireLive she and her mum had gone to sunbathe on Kasjuni Beach when the storm broke.
They packed up their belongings, headed to a rocky area and sheltered under a tree. "Mum said, 'wait it out until the sun comes out again," said Emily. There was a big flash and then a second.
Emily fears she may have been hit at the same time as her mum as she blacked out. Only her hearing was affected, but her mum was "absolutely out of it", she recalls, "she just wasn't there".
"I thought, 'this really is not good, I definitely thought she had been struck by lightning. It made sense".
She tried to call emergency services on her mobile but they did not understand Emily's English, so she raced to a beach bar to find someone to speak Croatian and call an ambulance. Daniella, 48, was taken to hospital in an ambulance. "I honestly thought she was dead at that point," said Emily. "Five minutes into the ambulance ride, I found out she was alive, which was a relief".
Daniella spent eight days in intensive care in Croatia as her daughter sorted out her repatriation with the British Consulate in Croatia. Emily secured her mum's flight home with the insurance company paying the bill for the flight and medical care home on an air ambulance flight, with her own private medical team from Germany.
After the air ambulance arrived in the UK, Daniella was taken to City Hospital, Nottingham, to ICU where she spent four weeks. Doctors in Croatia had assured Emily her mum was going to make a full recovery - but after more tests - the heartbreaking news was broken to the family.
"She was never going to be able to move again", said Emily.
She said her mum had loved festivals and dancing, and was on her feet all day in her profession as a physiotherapist.
"She was the most incredible individual; full of life and energy," said Emily. "She was great". Daniella had suffered a heart attack at the scene and her brain had been starved of oxygen.
An inquest on Wednesday heard Daniella's family sought an expert opinion from a specialist in London. After discussion with her family, Daniella was placed on end of life care.
Emily did not get to speak to her mum again - her eyes were open - but she could not move her face. "It looked like she was going to cry," remembers Emily.
"She remained in ICU. I thought this is 'just not fair to her'. She would absolutely hate that. If she was in her head, if she knew what was going on. She would hate that.
"The doctors said, 'take the life support off and breathing tube out'. Because she was really fit, she continued to breathe on her own. At that point they took the breathing tube out and put her on hydration". Emily was with her mum for a week-and-a-half before she died.
"It lasted eight days," said Emily, "then she left us". Daniella had a BSc in Physiotherapy and a Masters from UCL.
She worked across the country - at Newcastle General Hospital, Doncaster Royal Infirmary, Manchester Royal Infirmary. She was a former sports physiotherapist at West Yorkshire sports injury clinic, Bradford, and Senior Musculoskeletal Physiotherapist at Queensbury Physiotherapy Practice, Bradford.
She spent a year working for GPs, private physiotherapy practices and Hope Hospital, in her home city of Manchester, – covering A&E, specialist leg rehabilitation and osteoarthritis services. She also covered Manchester Dental Hospital and an increasing number of referrals for jaw treatments gave her the topic that led to her award-winning Master's dissertation.
She moved to Nottingham in 2002, providing full-time in-house physiotherapy services, then as a self-employed subcontractor at a private clinic, before she became an on-site occupational health outpatient contract treating 3,000+ employees. She set up her practice in 2008.
Emily said: "She was really caring to everyone. Everyone loves her. She lived and breathed her business. Without her people wouldn't come, because she wasn't just any physio, she was amazing, and she just helped everyone and she would get presents from her clients to say 'thank you'.
"She was a happy-go-lucky person, always going with the flow. I couldn't wish for a better person to raise me. She was my best friend. I told her everything".
Senior coroner for Nottinghamshire, Mairin Casey, recorded a narrative conclusion at the inquest. "Her death was due to a lightning strike, leading to cardiac arrest and hypoxic ischemic brain injury," she said.
