When a beast spooked Ava St Henry’s horse, the 15-year-old was flung onto a steel fence and then crushed as the horse collapsed on top of her.
She was instantly in such severe pain, she thought she was dying.
The Gin Gin High School student, who first sat on a horse as a toddler, was practicing for her first campdraft in March last year.
She’d just got around the first peg when the beast turned in front of her horse, which then flipped the horse and Ava smashed into the fence at full speed causing catastrophic injuries.
Campdrafting is a unique Australian equestrian sport where a horse and a rider work cattle, cutting one beast from a mob in a small yard, navigating it through a figure-eight course and out through a gate.
Ava said her Queensland Children’s Hospital (QCH) surgeon likened the impact as intestinal whiplash.
“When I hit the metal fence, all of my intestines ripped out of their original place and were forced back,” Ava said.
“So, all the damage was around my stomach, my gallbladder, my duodenum, my pancreas, my intestines and my bowels.”
As Ava waited 10 minutes for her Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) paramedic to arrive, she knew she was 500 kilometres from the Queensland Children’s Hospital.
Ava and her parents, Gina and Michael, recently visited the LifeFlight Bundaberg base to thank her aeromedical doctor Aaron Quay, QAS flight paramedic Michael Branch and QAS ground paramedic Rachel Mack.
These three emergency rescue “heroes” got Ava to the specialist surgeons she needed to save her life.
She spent 10 days in intensive care, and close to four months in hospital but is now back riding horses again.
“Meeting the crew today was amazing,” Ava said. “It was so amazing to say thank you for everything they’ve done for me.”
“Initially, I thought I was going to die, the pain was unbearable.
“The pain was all in my abdomen, and it was spreading everywhere. It was like I had been winded but like a hundred times worse.”
QAS paramedic Rachel Mack realised quickly Ava needed specialised care and more pain relief than she could give, so she called for the LifeFlight chopper to meet them at the Monto Hospital helipad.
“One of the first things I did was ask for a chopper,” Ms Mack said. “You could see that she needed further treatment, so I was able to organise a chopper pretty quickly.”
The LifeFlight helicopter was flying towards them as Rachel started treating Ava for a head injury and suspected spinal injuries.
Specialist equipment showed Ava had very low blood pressure and LifeFlight Critical Care Doctor Aaron Quay then ran an ultrasound over Ava’s stomach and confirmed his internal injury suspicions.
He would later discover Ava had a spinal injury, a perforated gallbladder, a cut in her liver, a pancreatic injury, damaged bowel, and a life-threatening aortic tear.
“We went into the top-to-toe assessment,” Doctor Quay said.
“The belly was really so suggestive of a surgical catastrophe going on in there, and we gave her a lot of pain relief, almost emptying the bags of medicines for her.”
Doctor Quay knew Ava would need interventional radiology, specific organ specialists, vascular surgeons and the ongoing support of allied health professionals.
“I think Gina was keener on a regional hospital close to home, I just said: ‘if it was my daughter, I would want her to fly down to QCH’.”
Gina recalls the look of discomfort in her daughter’s eyes.
“Ava kept saying she was in a lot of pain, and I think that was what prompted Rachel to say: ‘I think we need the chopper’.”
Michael watched his daughter as things went from bad to worse.
He said seeing Ava in such pain brought him to tears as he realised the seriousness of the situation.
“A little bump with just the tear of the aorta, and she would have bled out,” Michael said.
“And being in the chopper, now that we know, like that’s a little intensive care unit in the air – you can’t really have that in an ambulance.
“I wasn’t even close to the chopper because I had to go and look after the horses, but my LifeFlight story is knowing that my daughter and my wife were safe, and they were in the best hands.”
“I think LifeFlight is just amazing.”
Dr Quay said being reunited with Ava was a rare treat.
“Without LifeFlight, Ava might have died,” he said.
“We don’t always get to follow up our patients; we see them for a tiny amount of time which is the most horrific, tragic time they experience.
“We don’t get to see them standing up, walking, greeting you, hugging you, saying thank you. And I think that is a real honour, and a privilege to do that.”
Gin Gin High School will host two LifeFlight First Minutes Matter workshops next week with Year 11 and 12 students – to help prepare them for medical emergencies.
