999 Critical Condition: Mum thought she would die from pain

A Cheadle mum-of-two thought she was going to die after being struck down by excruciating pain from a mystery illness and being transferred by ambulance to University Hospital of North Midland’s Major Trauma Centre.

Georgia Forrester, of Froghall Road, Cheadle will feature in the third episode of 999 Critical Condition, the exclusive behind the scenes documentary charting the life-saving decisions of clinicians at Royal Stoke University Hospital.

Georgia was blue lighted by ambulance to Royal Stoke with extreme chest and back pain where doctors carried out a number of different investigations to find the source of the pain.

The 28-year-old said: “I was on my hands and knees and in absolute agony when I called 999 with crushing pain in my abdomen. It was like a tightening around my whiole body and really took my breath away. I have had two babies without pain relief and this pain was something else. I remember thinking in the ambulance that I was a gonna!”

In the episode doctors desperately try to find the cause of her pain with Dr Andrew Bennett, claiming initial results have thrown a “spanner in the works” and put him “back to square one” when they come back inconclusive

She added: “I stayed in hospital for two days and had a number of tests and they all came back clear and didn’t know what was wrong with me.”

Georgia has now been diagnosed with sphincter of oddi dysfunction, a condition which creates a build-up of digestives juices in the pancreas and liver and can lead to abdominal pain.

Also in this episode Trauma Team Leader Dr Julie Norton battles to save two patients whose lives hang in the balance. A father-of-four, is rushed in after suffering a cardiac arrest but the worry is whether he has suffered any lasting brain damage when his heart stopped. 

Next a man arrives bleeding so heavily that he risks losing his entire circulatory system.

After falling from a roof and onto a skip a patient is left him with a gaping wound to his thigh. But he also has potentially life-threatening injuries to his pelvis and spine.  

Lastly, Michael has had a severe stroke and the blood supply to his brain is already shutting down.  Dr Sanjeev Nayak, UHNM stroke doctor, performs a thrombectomy to remove the clot in his brain giving him the best chance of survival.

999 Critical Condition is on Channel 5 on Thursday 8 October at 9pm.