Elizabeth Stringer thanks John Hunter Hospital staff for saving her leg after running over herself with her own sports car

Elizabeth Stringer said it had been a year since the right side of her body was crushed by her own car near the Newcastle East apartment she was living in.

"It was a brain fart," Mrs Stringer said. "I had just taken my grandson to school, and I had been to the shops to pick up some groceries for dinner.

"I drove back home and there was a car parked in the garage entry. I got out of the car - I thought I had put it in park, but I must have put it in neutral - but when I turned back around after speaking to the person in the driveway, I noticed the car had started rolling.

"My immediate thought was that it might roll into someone on the footpath, so I just went into 'no-thought mode' and jumped in front of the car to try to push it into the gutter, and I got caught between the car and a street sign. Then I went under the car, and when I looked, I saw a black void in my leg."

The car had run over the entire right side of her body - crushing her elbow and breaking her hand and arm, fracturing her ribs, grazing her face, and partially amputating her leg.

At the same time, Kate King - a trauma nurse at John Hunter Hospital - was halfway through a pilates class near the scene.

"My instructor, Scott, knew what I did and he said 'Kate, get up! Someone has just been hit'," she said. "He started running out, and then I heard Elizabeth call out for help... We were there in seconds. The whole pilates class did little jobs - rang the ambulance, ran over to the surf life savers, got all of the towels out of the massage room. My bread and butter is dealing with major trauma, so I could assess Elizabeth pretty quickly, and I knew that she was seriously injured, and obviously, I knew what to do. The main thing was that she had this horrific leg injury, where she had a partial amputation of her right leg, and I could see the car had run right over her."

Ms King said Mrs Stringer's foot was bent 180 degrees from where it should have been.

"It was hanging on by a tiny bit of muscle and skin," she said. "She had no pulses in her foot. It was navy blue.

"I was just trying to keep the wound clean until the ambulance could get there."

Ms King said everyone at the scene worked together to help stabilise Mrs Stringer while they waited for paramedics to arrive.

The lifeguards from Newcastle Beach arrived with a first aid kit and oxygen.

"I asked them for some dressings, and they handed me some of those little gauze dressings," Ms King smiled.

"I just looked at them, and they said - 'Should we run back and get the shark bite kit?' I said, 'Yeah, I think that might be more appropriate'."

Ms King said Mrs Stringer had been the "queen of understatements" during the long and painful ordeal.

"She said to me, 'I think I've hurt my leg', and when the bones were crunching around in her arm she said, 'My elbow is a bit sore too'."

Mrs Stringer wanted to use the anniversary of the accident to thank all of the staff at John Hunter Hospital - from the doctors, surgeons, and nursing staff, to the cleaners, cooks, and orderlies.

But especially Ms King, her "superhero".

They were reunited at John Hunter Hospital on Tuesday, ahead of Mrs Stringer's final check up.

"I think, if Kate hadn't been there, I would have lost my leg," Mrs Stringer said.

"Not everyone has the expertise that Kate has. You might get a lot of people who have done some first aid courses who might think you needed to try to turn the leg back around. But she knew what she had to do, and she stabilised it for me to get me to hospital.

"I don't remember much about ICU, but I do remember seeing [Director of Trauma Services] Professor Balogh in the anaesthetic suite and him saying 'I am now going to take you into theatre and try to save your leg'.

"From the minute I got in there, the nursing staff, the cleaners, the pathology people, the doctors - they were all fantastic. Kate would come down every day to see me. Doctors would check on me, even on their days off.

"And I have healed so well. I have had seven surgeries. My leg was de-gloved, so I have had skin grafts and muscle grafts. I was in hospital for about seven weeks, and it has been a long recovery.

"But I could not have asked for better treatment. You could not wish to be looked after any better.

"The whole thing boils down to this. I still have my leg, I have my arm, I am alive, and I have this hospital, and all of its staff, to thank."

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