Following an article in last week’s Sun, Iolanthé who is a Yellowwood Park resident, contacted the school to re-unite with her patient after more than a decade after their traumatic encounter.
The reunion took place at the school with a tea in honour of Nedra and Iolanthé. She also told of how Nedra was conscious throughout the whole ordeal. It is uncommon for both patient and responder to remember every detail of their encounter. Iolanthé, who now teaches medical students about emergency response, ended off by describing Nedra as a fighter.
Many of Nedra’s colleagues had not known Nedra’s story were awestruck. Nedra, a teacher at St. Raphael’s School was diagnosed a quadriplegic, following a diving accident when she was 27-years-old.
During a night out with some friends at Anstey’s Beach, Nedra dove into a shallow pool head-first. The impact of the dive left her unable to move her limbs, neither could she move her head to call-out for help. An experienced swimmer and lifeguard, she managed to hold her breath under water until someone came to her aid. When they did pull her from the pool, she instructed her friends to take her to hospital. In a frantic state, she was placed in the back seat of a two door vehicle and rushed to Wentworth ambulance base, situated near the hospital.
Iolanthé and her husband, both qualified paramedics, were the first to attend to Nedra. “The car came screeching in. Everyone in the car was frantic. I knew something was wrong immediately when they told me she had dived into a pool,” recalls Iolanthé.
Attempting to remove Nedra from the vehicle presented itself as a mammoth task. After 45 minutes and threats of cutting apart the car in order to remove Nedra, Iolanthé and her husband managed to get her out. “Nedra was having difficulty breathing, so I had to put her on oxygen and we stabilised her neck. She was lying on her friend’s lap which was an added challenge. My husband and I climbed into the car, moved the seats forward and flattened them. Everyone was horrified at the thought of cutting off the roof ,” said Iolanthé.
Nedra was tied to short and long spinal boards and slid out of the vehicle. After successfully removing her from the car, she was taken to Entabeni Hospital for further treatment.
Iolanthé visited Nedra a few days later while she was in ICU, where she was told Nedra had contracted pneumonia. “I didn’t think she was going to make it,” she said. Many patients with Nedra’s injuries do not survive after they contract pneumonia. She spent a month on a ventilator. “Being on a ventilator was scary,” said Nedra. She spent three months at Entabeni Hospital before being taken to Cape Town for rehabilitation.
“The most difficult thing was removing her from the car. I was also amazed that she didn’t drown, because they were partying and no-one was paying attention to her,” said Iolanthé.
“Being diagnosed a quadriplegic was not easy to accept. The support was good, everyone around me was positive. Reality hit me when I was alone at rehab, learning about my condition and limitations, and trying to cope with my disability. It takes a while to get to the stage where you realise you are okay.”
“I went for one counseling session and refused to go to anymore, I wanted to go back to teaching. There was no time for self-pity and wallowing,” said Nedra.
After understanding the gravity of her situation and realising it could have been worse, she says she was blessed from the word go. She received treatment from an experienced neurologist and the support from her family kept her going. She remembers her mother saying to her: “You can see me, you can hear me, you are fine.”
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