A woman who miraculously survived being hit by a bus says it's all thanks to her late husband, who came to her in a vision after the incident.
Carole Attle, 74, had been put into a medically induced coma after sustaining serious injuries, but made it out alive thanks to a message she believes she got from the afterlife.
The Durham local had been out shopping in Stockton-on-Tees in July 2022, when she was knocked down by a single-decker bus.
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Carole was rushed to Cook University Hospital with bruises from head to toe, a broken eye socket and nose, three smashed ribs, and a bleed to the brain.
"I’d been in Matalan and had bought a present for somebody, which my daughter found in the boot of my car," she recalled.
“After that I know nothing until five weeks later when I woke up in a hospital bed."
Carole's next memory was seeing her husband, David, in bed beside her - even though he had passed away in 2019.
"When I was in intensive care I don’t know whether it was real or what it was but I woke up one day and I could have sworn my husband was in bed beside me," she shared.
“He was saying basically there’s no room upstairs for you and we don’t want you going to the other place, so get yourself pulled round and fighting and get out of here, and I think I turned a corner after that.”
Carole believes that it's because of her husband's message that she's still alive today.
Despite her dreadful injuries, she did make a full recovery and came home from hospital last October, though she did need a care team at her home for a further nine weeks.
That's especially great progress considering, when Carole's daughter Rebecca had spoken to medics, they revealed that they didn't think she was going to make it.
“I was told the x-rays don’t look good, and they’ve done as much as they can to help her," said Rebecca, 50.
Perhaps someone on the other side really was looking out for her.
Meanwhile, Carole took time to get to grips with the time she had missed while she was in a coma.
“She spent seven weeks in intensive care and two weeks in the trauma ward, and during that time we had at least four difficult conversations where they advised she wasn’t going to make it," said Rebecca.
“She’s missed a big chunk of her life and is still coming to terms with it.
“Even daft things, like when I first started doing her shopping for her, she thought I was spending a lot of money, but she didn’t realise the cost of living had gone up so quick.”
Topics: Health
Ali Condon