Reading teacher shocks doctors waking up from six-week coma

Guy Vickers-Jones, 43, was running in Tilehurst when a blood clot stopped his heart.

Two off-duty nurses found him collapsed, but only 10 per cent of people survive an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and his family feared he would suffer brain damage or worse.

To the surprise of his nurses, GP and ambulance crews, Guy woke up this month with no major neurological impairment.

“I feel humbled by it. I think I’m really lucky,” said Guy, adding it was incredible that one of the people who stopped was a cardiology nurse.

“I’m just so grateful to those nurses. They literally saved my life. If they didn’t come along I wouldn’t be here now.

“I’m alive because of them and I think that’s phenomenal. I owe my life to that nurse who stopped her car, pulled over and gave me CPR. If she didn’t do that I would have been dead or braindead.”

Guy Vickers-Jones, from Reading, in hospital after he woke up from a six week coma

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The first nurse to find Guy when he collapsed on September 29 gave him CPR for twenty minutes.

“I think it would have been tough on her, she would have been totally exhausted, wiped out, but she just kept doing it,” said Guy.

Another off-duty nurse stopped her car and took over chest compressions until the ambulance arrived, which had been called by a passer-by.

Hell

For over a month Guy was in a coma, trapped inside dreams that he compared to living in hell.

He described vivid illusions of being at a party with a nurse where she force-fed him prescription drugs.

Meanwhile, in reality, the same nurse was administering life-saving medicine to try and wake Guy from his coma.

Guy imagined himself trapped on a boat where the crew were experimenting on people, while he tried in vain to tell them he didn’t belong there.

At the same time, outside his dreams, six nurses were holding Guy down as he unconsciously tried to rip hospital equipment from his body.

Right to left: Guy Vickers-Jones and his partner of 11 years, Peter Finnan, who said he was "hugely grateful" to the nurses who found Guy and to the NHS

“It was terrifying because I couldn’t wake myself up and I didn’t want to be there.

“I couldn’t get out of them and I wanted to because I hated them.

“During the coma and afterwards I didn’t know what was real or not. Peter said I kept crying when I woke up. I imagine there was a bit of shock and confusion.”

At the same time, Guy’s father, Chris, was crying tears of joy.

“Many times our spirits were really down low because we were never sure whether he was going to come out of it at all,” said Chris.

He described a feeling of “unbelievable happiness” when Guy woke up.

“Just to spend time with him, to be with him, is a thrill. It’s wonderful.”

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He added: “It gave me a second chance at being a father. Some of the things I wasn’t very good at bringing him up I try to make better now.”

Three weeks on and Guy has made a remarkable recovery. Despite losing 3.5 stone during the coma and still struggling with fatigue and frequent headaches, he is now walking up to two miles a day and his short-term memory is improving. He said: “It makes me think how important it is that people know CPR.

“It should be taught in schools, because you just don’t know if you might have to give it out.”