Quick-thinking paramedics saved a toddler's foot after she was run over by a lawn mower.
Amelia Duncan was playing in the garden of her family's home at Wisbech St Mary, near Wisbech, when the accident happened on May 27.
Her mother Tracy said: 'We were out cutting the grass and generally tidying the garden up. Amelia ran out from under the shed and the next thing she was under the lawn mower.'
When father Ben lifted off the ride-on mower he had been using the cut the grass, the couple saw Amelia's right leg had been deeply gashed by the blades.
An ambulance rushed to their home after the couple called 999. Paramedics Andy Long and Jordan Van Noortwijk and student medic Rachel Sheehan were soon on the scene.
Critical care paramedic Carl Smith, a volunteer from Norfolk Accident Rescue Service (NARS), met the ambulance on its way to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King's Lynn. NARS, whose medics have extra training, assist crews with more serious cases.
'When Carl turned up it was a relief as he has extra skills he could use to get her the care she needed,' said Miss Sheehan.
After assessing Amelia's injury, Mr Smith said she needed to be taken to the nearest major trauma centre at Addenbrooke's Hospital, in Cambridge.
'The plan was initially to go to King's Lynn because that was the nearest hospital,' he said. 'But we realised that the injuries she had needed specialist plastic surgery, which needed to be at a major regional trauma and that's Addenbrooke's.' Mrs Duncan said: 'Initially I was shocked by the Addenbrooke's decision but they obviously did the right thing.'
Mrs Duncan spent much of the next three weeks at Addenbrooke's with Amelia, as she underwent seven operations, including major surgery on her second birthday, on May 30.
'I opened all of her cards while she was in theatre, so they were all there when she came out,' she said.
While Amelia still bears a scar down her leg, surgeons saved her foot and she is now back on her feet again. She has met the ambulance crew and Mr Smith with her parents and sister Chloe, aged eight and six-year-old brother James to say thanks.
'If it wasn't for them we don't know what might have happened,' said Mr Duncan.
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