She fought for life in a coma for 10 days - now this Hartlepool woman is saying thank you to the NHS in a special way

Jade Henderson, 23, has started doing volunteer work at a North East hospital just a year after she collapsed in the street with a bleed on the brain.

She died twice on the operating table, her heart stopped beating and she had a stroke in November 2019, said her mum.

Jade spent ten days in a coma and experts found that Jade had an arteriovenous malformation (AVM) which disrupts blood flow and oxygen circulation – and that she’d had it since she was born without anyone knowing about it.

The AVM had burst in Jade’s head. The next day after her first operation, she was rushed back into surgery with another bleed and had to have part of her skull bone removed.

Yet Jade, who works as an airline cabin crew member, has fought back and now she is voluntarily helping at the Queen Elizabeth hospital in Gateshead as part of a scheme called Operation Wingman.

She said: “It keeps my mind off things and I love it. I work by going outside the wards and transferring snacks over in boxes to them.

"The project has been going on since Covid-19 started but I was so poorly I have just started in the last week.”

She explained her role in Operation Wingman and added: “We are pretty much going in and being a comfort blanket for doctors and nurses.

"We are being someone that they can go to and talk to, and have a tea or coffee.

"It makes you feel better knowing that you are doing something for the NHS.”

But although Jade loves the work, she is still determined to back to her usual job as soon as time allows.

She has learned how to read, write, walk and talk all over again and kept her job as cabin crew.

But life is still not running smoothly for her. She is having numerous seizures and blackouts and is on medication for them.

She is also waiting to hear the results of her latest set of medical tests.

In September this year, she had gamma knife radiation treatment at Sheffield Hallamshire Hospital.

The treatment uses small gamma rays to deliver a precise dose of radiation to a target. A frame was attached to Jade’s head with screws to stabilise the head during the procedure which targeted Jade’s remaining AVMs.

Jade also had an angiogram where a catheter was inserted into an artery in her groin to check for blocked or narrowed blood vessels.

She told the Mail today: “I am doing the hospital work because I need to stay busy. I could not just sit back and do nothing.

"We are waiting to find out whether the gamma knife treatment worked on the AVM and got rid of it, whether it was not working at all.”

She needs to have angiograms every six months for four years to check on her progress. After those four years, she will hopefully get the news that the treatment has completely worked.

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