A WOMAN who contracted a catastrophic combination of viral pneumonia and swine flu has praised a flying squad of medics who brought her back from certain death.

Julie Exton was rushed to the Great Western Hospital with serious breathing problems, but thanks to a consultant who had read about extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, she was given a 50/50 chance of survival.

She is thought to be only the second person to be given the treatment in Swindon.

“It was a big gamble, but it was the difference between life and death,” she said.

Mrs Exton, 53, from Malmesbury, first thought she had a bad dose of flu, made worse by her ME.

But it became increasingly difficult to breathe and she was taken by ambulance to hospital on January 2 where consultant Dr Mark Juniper realised she was in serious danger.

One of her lungs had collapsed, the other was barely functioning and other organs were shutting down.

While she was in casualty she suffered a panic attack and ended up in a coma.

Dr Juniper alerted experts from the Royal Brompton Hospital in London and they raced down to perform the procedure that removes a patient’s blood and oxygenates it when the lungs are not working.

But her family was warned her chances of survival were only around 50:50.

“They said when and if they pulled me out of it I was very likely to have brain damage, I could have a stroke, I might be a cabbage and not to expect me to come home ever again,” she said.

Husband Phil was faced with the agonising decision to go ahead.

Mrs Exton was taken back to the Brompton – one of only five centres in the county with the expertise to offer the treatment – and spent three weeks in intensive care before being move back to the high dependency unit in Swindon.

Three attempts were made to bring her out of her coma and she finally woke up two weeks later.

 “When I came out of the coma I was totally paralysed,” she said.

“I woke up in high dependency and I couldn’t talk.”

It wasn’t until earlier this month that she was finally allowed home to recuperate.

“I was so lucky that the right consultant was on duty when I went in there,” she said. 

“They told me I was the second person to ever have this treatment in Swindon.”

“There was no way I was going to get through the next 24 hours. To have six surgeons come from London – how lucky am I? To come through this with just a walking problem and a few others. I owe my life to these surgeons.”

She said the highly specialised procedure was not widely known and while she was in hospital staff wanted to hear all about it.

Now she is concentrating on regaining her strength and getting back to normal.

ECMO uses an artificial lung outside the body to pump and oxygenate blood. It is described by some doctors as a last chance of life and is more often used for babies with severe heart and respiratory failure.