A woman has raised more than £1,500 for University Hospital of South Manchester’s Cardiothoracic Critical Care Unit after doctors saved her life after she suffered heart failure last winter.
Lisa Williams, her mum Marion Harrison, her sister Karen Savo and a group of friends and members of The Birches School Walkers, took part in the Wirral Walk, across the Merseyside peninsula, to raise money as a thank you to the team at Wythenshawe Hospital who helped saved her life.
Lisa, from Baguley, said: “I thought I just had a bad cold. I remember getting to the hospital but don’t remember anything else for two weeks.
“Thanks to everyone at the hospital – with the fantastic care and support of the surgeons and staff, six weeks of intensive treatment and open heart surgery, I am well down the recovery road.
“I feel like I have been given a real second chance.”
Lisa was rushed to Wythenshawe Hospital in January 2016 after visiting her GP with extremely low blood pressure and flu-like symptoms.
She was diagnosed with seasonal flu and had a rare reaction to the strain of the virus which attacked her heart.
She was moved to the Cardiothoracic Critical Care Unit where she was only given a 50/50 chance of survival after her heart began to fail.
Lisa was put on Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation machine, known as ECMO, which acted as an external heart/lung by extracting blood, adding oxygen, removing carbon dioxide and then returning it into the body.
UHSM’s Cardiothoracic Critical Care Unit, is one of just five hospitals in the UK which provides ECMO support. She also underwent open heart surgery.
Lisa is now recovering at home, is undergoing physiotherapy and is looking forward to being able to drive and return to work again.
