A young couple are looking forward to getting married after a freak accident almost wrecked their dreams.
Drew Warnes (25) nearly died after the door of a bus luggage compartment flew open and hit him as he walked along Spalding’s Double Street last month.
Drew had been taking a load of washing to his dad’s house at around 8.30am when the bus passed him in the narrow street.
The door hit him in the shoulder blade as the bus drove past and threw him to the ground.
In the immediate aftermath, police reported that Drew had suffered only minor injuries, but when he arrived at Pilgrim Hospital, Boston, he was found to have injured his neck and fractured ribs.
He said: “I really don’t remember anything about it but witnesses say, and you can just see it on CCTV, that the luggage compartment lifted up and I went flying.”
Drew, of Spring Street, was transferred to Queen’s Medical Centre, Nottingham, and fitted with a head brace to support his neck.
Drew said: “I thought the worst was over. I was back on my feet almost straight away, but then on the Friday, four days after I was hit, I felt that I couldn’t breathe.”
Drew had suffered a very rare rupture of the thoracic duct and the left side of his body was filled with a bodily fluid called chyle.
He said: “That can be deadly and it was shutting my body down.
“I had to have an emergency operation and the doctor had to research it because it is so rare.
“I spent two days in intensive care and came really close to losing my life.”
But Drew pulled through, helped by his girlfriend of five years Amy Holmes.
He said: “She was there by my bedside the whole time.
“Before it happened I had been planning to ask her to marry me and when they thought I might die, my boss told her.
“So when I came round she asked me if it was true so I proposed from my hospital bed.
“It’s not exactly how I had planned it, but when something like this happens it makes you realise you just have to go for it because you never know what’s going to happen.
“I’ll make it up to her when I get better.”
Drew is now walking well and will stay in the neck brace for eight to 12 weeks.
He added: “My vertebrae had come out of line so the neck brace keeps everythin in line while it heals.
“But it’s not too bad and I just feel lucky to be alive because I came so close to death.”