“My wife had no idea what was left of the husband who said goodbye to her that Friday morning.”

For three weeks in August 2022, 47-year-old Matt Poole has been lying unconscious in a hospital bed — he has life-and-limb-threatening injuries from a road traffic collision on the A339 north of Basingstoke.

When he eventually comes round, he is told he has a catalogue of breaks, dislocations and other serious injuries, from his shoulders to his toes.

“It’s Friday, see you later for curry night.”

Matt sets off to work on his motorbike at 08:00am. It’s a beautiful, sunny Friday morning, “perfect riding weather”, as he says goodbye to his wife.

Riding through rural twisty back lanes, Matt collides with the side of an oncoming car. He flies over the handlebars, bounces off the windscreen and into a nearby field. He is conscious, but in unimaginable pain.

Just four minutes after the 999 call, our Critical Care Team is dispatched by helicopter. The crew are advised that they are attending a collision between a car and a motorcycle — and the motorcyclist has been thrown 30 metres from the collision site.

Our crew perform a sedation using a variety of advanced medicines and carry out a fracture reduction: a procedure that realigns a broken bone to its proper position.

They place a pelvic binder around Matt’s waist – a device used to compress the pelvis to try and stop the bleeding – and continue administering strong pain relief. Due to Matt’s rural location, the team decide to fly Matt to the region’s Major Trauma Unit, University Hospital Southampton.

Matt spends the next 10 days in the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit, relying on tubes to help him breathe and feed. With breakes in his wrist, arm, shoulder, spine, pelvis, hip and foot, as well as damage to the two main ligaments in his right knee and all four major ligaments in his left knee (ACL, MCL, PCL, LCL), Matt requires hours of major surgery and rehabilitation.

For the next week, he floats between states of conscious and unconscious.

“Not only was I physically very broken but my wife just didn’t know what sort of state I would wake up in. She had no idea what was left of the husband who said goodbye to her that Friday morning.

“That’s probably the hardest thing for me to look back on — what I put my wife and family through,” said Matt.

After six months in hospitals across Southampton, Basingstoke and Alton, Matt is finally discharged home to his family. But there’s a long road ahead.

He’s lost around 20kg in bodyweight and it’ll be two long years until he can walk unaided — largely due to the development of heterotopic ossification: the formation of bones in soft tissue (where bone should not be).

“I was a broken mess in a field.”

Many of our patients are left with little-to-no memory of the day we flew to them. Since the launch of our Aftercare service, patients, relatives and bystanders now have the chance to speak to an experienced member of our clinical team as well as meeting the crew who helped them, where possible.

In October 2024, Matt met with Specialist Paramedic and Aftercare Manager Tom — who was also part of the team who treated Matt.

“One of the most amazing moments for me was meeting Tom, as it was he who had attended to me on scene. It blew me away to meet him face to face for the “first” time,” said Matt.

“I was questioning whether meeting him was a good idea, but it turned out to be hugely beneficial. He filled in all these missing details, which was amazing.”

Matt added: “The last time he saw me I was a broken mess in a field. He must see a lot of people at their worst, so it was important for me to show him that, because of the work he did I’m up, I’m walking and I’m better. I’m alive.

“I want to do a fundraiser next year to thank the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Air Ambulance for being there for me. But to everyone who supports it: I want to thank you for being so selfless. The service you keep going is life-saving. I am proof of that.”