Woman ‘died’ for two minutes after breaking neck doing belly flop into garden pool
A mum who was involved in a freak garden pool accident has spoken out on her horror of waking up and being told the extent of her life-changing injuries.
Gemma Allinson was having fun in the £400 garden pool she had bought for her children to enjoy over the summer of 2022, goofing around and harmlessly enjoying her family time.
But, harrowing footage showed how serious things can get in a pool if you're not careful.
The mother-of-three gently belly flopped into the shallow water next to her children, but suffered a horrific injury after carrying out the jump into the 14-feet home pool.
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Her final leap into the pool broke Gemma's neck on impact and she suffered a cardiac arrest, as her kids watched on in horror as their mum remained face-down in the water.
The Brit could have died if it wasn't for her eldest son, Cameron Todd, 20, who was eating his dinner when his youngest sister Daisy ran in to tell him what had happened.
Cameron ran out and grabbed his mum out of the water, while Gemma's 10-year-old son Alfie went to ask their neighbours for help.
With their assistance, they got Gemma out of the pool and started CPR, before someone took over as he went to get a defibrillator from the community centre.
Luckily, it took just 10 minutes for an ambulance to show up and take the 42-year-old to Hull Royal Infirmary, which is where Gemma learnt the extent of her injuries.
She was told that she had fractured her C5 vertebrate in her cervical spine and had water in her lungs, which resulted in a four-week stay in hospital as she recovered and aimed to get healthy again.
A life-saving operation followed, where her broken bone was replaced by a cage secured by two plates and two screws in the back of her neck.
After this, she was moved to Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield, spending six months slowly recovering, later finding out that she had no pules and was 'dead' for more than two minutes.
Gemma, from Hull, explained her side of events: "I was just messing about and the next day I woke up with a tube down my throat.
"I didn't know where the hell I was, what I was doing or what had happened. It was awful. I remember waking up, I just cried.
"You shouldn't really be jumping in shallow water, I've learned that lesson. Especially adults, it won't matter for kids because they're a bit smaller.
"But I think grown men and grown women shouldn't really be jumping in a pool because they're hard underneath. A bang to your head, a bang to your body, you've damaged yourself," she highlighted.
Due to the severity of her injury, she said that they didn't think she would be alive or that she would walk again.
During her time in Wakefield, she had to 'learn to do everything' post accident, adding: "I had to learn to eat, walk, look after myself, get dressed, wash myself.
"I had a nose tube in to feed because I couldn't eat.
"I had a catheter in for a good five months so I had to learn to go to the toilet myself properly, get showers on my own, wash my hair on my own, brush my teeth.
"Everybody had to do that for me because I couldn't use my hands," the mother revealed.
Gemma still has weakness on the right side of her body, meaning she has learnt how to use her left hand for things - her right foot is also weaker than her left, making it hard for her to walk properly.
The family threw the pool away a year after the incident, as no-one wanted to go near it after the horror their mum went through.
Cameron is now her legal carer, as Gemma credited all of her children with helping her stay positive during recovery.
"My kids have really helped me through my recovery and being able to soldier on with things.
"It's been a tough ride but I've done it all by myself. The kids keep me going.
"They remember it all, they were so scared and worried. It was just awful, I cried every day.
"My whole life's changed. You either learn to live with it or you don't and because I've got kids I've learned to live with it because of them," the mother admitted.
As her ligaments no longer work, she wears a leg brace and uses a mobility scooter, though she managed to retake her driving test in a mobility car so she can do the school run again, a slight return to normal life, despite saying that it's now 'harder to live'.
Gemma also took her children on holiday to Butlins on her own, managing to go swimming with them - something that seemed impossible when the accident happened two years ago, in July 2022.
Joshua Nair