December 30, 2022 started just like any other day for Lumsden farmer Thomas Hewitt. But everything changed in seconds when the volunteer firefighter slipped while checking a water tank, impaling his upper thigh on a metal fence post.
“Initially, I was frustrated and annoyed I was injured,” recalls Thomas, 37. “Then I ripped my leg off this waratah [a temporary fencing post] and realised my femoral artery was severed and a good flow of blood was coming out.”
With time crucial if he was to survive the life-threatening injury, it quickly dawned on Thomas he was going to have to save his own life.
“I kicked into survival mode,” says Thomas, who’s first priority was to stem the bleeding with a makeshift tourniquet fashioned from the overalls he was wearing. “Stuff I’d learnt through the fire brigade with trauma care was going through my mind at a hundred miles an hour.”
Then he started calling for help. “I called 111 and told them, ‘I’ve got myself in some mischief. I’m a firefighter from Lumsden. I’ve severed my artery and don’t have long. Send a helicopter.’
“I knew I needed proper tourniquets and there were two in the fire truck, so I called my boss at the fire station and said, ‘Get here as quick as you can.’ About six minutes later, guys started showing up.”
Thomas with his youngest, Cory, in 2022.
Not sure if he was going to make it, Thomas also rang his wife Monique, who was 300 metres away at the farm house, completely unaware of what was happening.
With wife Monique at the Fire Brigade Awards the same year.
With a vague description – “I’m dying at the water tank” – Monique, Thomas’ sister Hilary Anderson and her husband Sean, who were staying for the holidays, leaped in the ute and luckily found Thomas at the first water tank they checked.
Arriving before anyone else, Monique was shocked to find her husband in such a dire state, but there was no time to panic as Thomas immediately started giving them orders.
“I knew I needed to slow my heart rate down to stem the bleeding,” tells dad-of-three Thomas, who directed his family to tie a second tighter tourniquet with a guide wire and tent peg found in the back of the ute. “I was feeling faint and had tunnel vision, but I told them I needed a piece of string and a stick.”
Adds Monique, 37, “He was honestly the calmest person I’ve ever seen. He was even trying to have conversations with me about contacting the insurance company.”
Thomas explains, “I had no head trauma, so it was mostly about dealing with the adrenaline. Through the fire brigade, I’ve learnt to be cool-headed when adrenaline gets going. So, I was thinking of the things I needed to do to stay alive.”
Humour has got the couple through the darkest of times.
Minutes later, emergency services started arriving in succession and took over.
Relieved, Monique accepted an offer from a firefighter friend to swap out with her holding the tourniquet tight.
Watching from the fence line, Monique was in complete disbelief about what was unfolding in front of her.
“I’m not great with blood, but a friend came to give me a hug and I let them do what they needed to,” says Monique. “There was no point in me being hysterical.”
Despite his critical condition, as Thomas was loaded into the rescue helicopter, both he and Monique managed a moment of humour.
“The mood was a bit negative, so I just yelled out, ‘Off to the chopper!’ and everyone cracked up and away I went,” he says. “I wanted to lift the mood a bit for the boys before I left, so it wasn’t all focused on ‘Oh, my God, he’s dying.'”
Thomas underwent a 10-hour surgery the day after the accident.
At the same moment, Monique suddenly realised she wasn’t wearing a bra.
“I was in my pyjamas and knew there was nothing I could do sitting in the waiting room, so I ran back up to the house and drove to meet them at Dunedin,” she says.
“The whole time driving, I couldn’t stop thinking, ‘I’m going to get there and he’s probably dead.'”
But her husband continued to defy the odds.
“I was talking to a paramedic I know and she was amazed – I had no pulse, I should have been dead,” says Thomas. “I can remember landing and as I went into hospital. It felt like I was being led down a corridor into the matrix. I could hear all these noises but I couldn’t talk. Then I woke up six days later asking where my wife was.”
Outside hospital a week later.
It was an excruciating wait for Monique, starting with a 10-hour operation where surgeons tried to save Thomas’ leg.
“The first time I saw him afterwards, he didn’t even look like the same person, with tubes down his throat and nose,” reflects Monique, who first fell for her husband of 13 years as a teenager.
“The first doctor I saw, I said, ‘Be straight, what’s happening?’ They told me he was going to lose the leg. I didn’t care, I just wanted him alive, but it was up and down for six days.
“When he woke up, Thomas was distraught and emotional. He’d lost a week of his life. One of the first things he said was, ‘Take my leg off. I want to go home.’ But it wasn’t that easy.”
In an induced coma. “He didn’t look like the same person,” says Monique.
Doctors tried to save the limb but five days after he came out of the coma, Thomas became incredibly ill with a raging fever of 41 degrees. Convinced his damaged leg was causing it and terrified for the second time her husband was going to die, Monique, with the support of a dedicated ICU nurse, campaigned relentlessly for amputation.
“He’d been fighting this infection and doctors couldn’t find what was causing it. I begged, ‘You need to take the leg off – it’s trying to kill him.’ Instantly after surgery to remove it, his temperature was gone.”
It’s been a long road to recovery and life is much different than before the accident, but the resilient family has adjusted remarkably well, including children, Ella, 16, Ollie 14, and Cory, six, who initially stayed with family while Thomas was in hospital.
“When I took them in to see him with the leg gone, they didn’t care,” says Monique, smiling proudly. “It was like, ‘Our dad’s alive, who cares?’ I can’t imagine many other kids who’d deal with that so well and still be ripping jokes.”
Ollie wheeling his dad outside for the first time after his amputation.
As for Thomas, nothing will stop this gung-ho Kiwi bloke from living life to the fullest.
“He was giving all the nurses heart attacks in the hospital doing wheelies in his wheelchair,” laughs Monique.
Now the focus is on rehabilitation and gaining strength using a prosthetic leg for a few hours a day.
“He goes to the gym, weightlifts and swims a few times a week,” shares Monique. “We were laughing the first time at the pool that with one leg, he’d be swimming in circles. But he swims just as good as he did with two and he’s going to build back up to free-diving again.
“He’s already been out to Milford Sound driving the boat and our son takes him driving round the farm. He’s doing all the things he did before, just in a different way.”
While they remain resolutely optimistic about the future – “By the time we die, he will have lived longer without a leg than with” – the pair concede it has had a significant impact on their livelihood. For the last six years, Thomas has managed a large-scale Southland dairy farm, but they’re unsure what the future holds.
Monique has also had to stand down from her job as a centre advisor for Playcentre NZ in order to support Thomas and drive him to appointments. But, as always, the pair are adamant there’s a silver lining.
The keen fisherman is angling to get back to his passion.
“It sucks he had to lose a leg, but we’re making the most of more time together with the kids,” enthuses Monique.
Both are quick to add this experience has also showed them how amazing their small town is as they heap praise on everyone who has been there for them in recent months. From friends in the fire brigade and wider emergency services to health professionals and all the people and businesses who generously donated funds or vouchers, they’ve been overwhelmed with support.
“We’re very grateful for our community, and I’m very lucky to have been in the fire brigade and knowing what I needed to do to save my own life,” says Thomas, who’s planning to share these skills at workshops with other volunteers from the wider regional fire stations.
Thomas and Monique with their kids (from left) Ella, Cory and Ollie.
“Lots more positive than negative has come out of this experience, and I can still do anything and everything I put my mind to.”
