Sylvia and Ken Walker were travelling along Boundary Rd, Fernside, after leaving Rangiora, when Ken, who was driving, felt dizzy and unwell.
He stopped the car so Sylvia could take the wheel, but as he made his way out of the vehicle he collapsed ‘‘like a ton of bricks’’, says Sylvia - and was totally ‘‘unresponsive’’.
With Ken half on the berm and half on the road, Sylvia says despite being in situations where she had helped others, she forgot all the things she was ‘‘supposed to be doing’’.
‘‘I felt like a dithering wreck,’’ she says.
Three very special people came to her rescue.
‘‘Their actions reaffirmed my confidence in human nature,’’ Sylvia says.
She stopped a car and the women called an ambulance.
Another car then stopped on the other side of the road and the woman also helped, while a man alighted from a third vehicle and placed a jersey under Ken’s head which was bleeding from hitting the road.
‘‘All three were fantastic,’’ she says.
As they waited for the ambulance, a nurse from the Flying Doctor Service, stopped and assessed him, and another nurse also stopped.
However, as the ambulance was on the way, and they could see Ken was being well cared for, they carried on.
‘‘Lady number one took my car to her place on Boundary Rd, and the other lady, who also lived on Boundary Rd, took all my perishable groceries and put them in the fridge and her freezer, so I could go in the ambulance with Ken.’’
The person with her car later texted her at the hospital to see if she needed to be picked up, but their daughter had already arranged to pick them up.
Ken’s prognosis was an obstructed bowel, pressing on an artery, stopping the blood flow. At 2am in the morning he was homeward bound.
‘‘If I hadn’t stopped I would have passed out and crashed,’’ he says.
Both Ken and Sylvia want to acknowledge the actions of everyone who helped, and even though they delivered a bouquet of flowers to the two women who were first on the scene, they still feel humbled by all those who offered a hand. Sadly, says Sylvia, she did not get the man’s name, to thank him in person.
