The man who saved my life

When James Moore had a near-fatal cycling accident, an air ambulance doctor was first on the scene. Three years on, he met his saviour to learn exactly what happened that day

Rescue reunion: James Moore (right) credits Dr Mark Shirran with saving his life while working on an Air Ambulance helicopter (Micha Theiner)

“You were certainly one of the sickest patients I ever treated to have survived,” says Mark Shirran, a helicopter doctor who was on the team of men and women that saved my life.

That’s when I feel the acid rising in my stomach, my heart starting to pound and the feeling of panic increasing. This cannot happen, I tell myself, breathing slowly and mentally talking myself down using some of the techniques taught to me by my therapist.

Fortunately, no one seems to notice. It helps that the helipad where we meet is basking in a sultry heat that has been making east London feel like East Africa for much of the day. Everyone is wearing shades. And as for the cold sweat? Well, everyone else is sweating, too.

I’ve travelled to the headquarters of London’s Air Ambulance to meet Dr Shirran, who was working as a doctor on the charity’s distinctive red helicopter on the day my Brompton bicycle and I had an extremely uncomfortable close encounter with a tanker on a road in east London.

I don’t remember meeting him on that day; he was just a voice, a distant sound poking through a haze of pain and panic, a haze he turned into blessed oblivion as he inserted into my arm the needle that anaesthetised me.

My memory isn’t all that clear about the ride leading up to the accident either. But the event itself and the agonising aftermath are seared into my brain. I spend entirely too much time under those wheels. I am there now, as I write. It is not pleasant.

Flashbacks, disturbing dreams, panic attacks – Dr Shirran himself says that some trauma victims are overwhelmed by them. I’m fortunate enough to have a supportive family and the help of a therapist to prevent that from happening. I also have a streak of bloody-mindedness that hasn’t always served me well, but has come in rather useful since the accident.

But it’s been hard work.

James Moore credits Dr Mark Shirran with saving his life (Micha Theiner)

I’m here on the helipad largely because I’m hoping, perhaps, for some sort of catharsis. That it might help. But I also want to be able to shake the man’s hand and say thank you in person. I want to show him what his work has accomplished; I imagine that serving on the air ambulance can be extremely stressful: seeing people die in front of you daily can’t be easy to come to terms with. The fact that people like Dr Shirran are willing to do it, however, saves lives. Lives such as mine. My body isn’t quite the same as it was, and never will be. Handling the psychological blowback from the event is an ongoing battle. But life is still very sweet.

So I jump in at the deep end and ask the million-dollar questions.

Dr Shirran’s job was to stabilise me so that the surgeons could get to work. As well as granting me relief from the intense, excruciating pain I was going through, he called in what is known as a Code Red to the Royal London Hospital. This meant that blood would be on hand for a transfusion immediately upon my arrival. Technology and procedures have now been improved to the extent that blood can now be carried on the helicopter, something else I learn on my visit.

The most immediate threat to my life was the fact that my lungs had collapsed. I also had bleeding on my pelvis, which could have been just as fatal.

Dr Shirran, a tall man, tanned even though it’s what passes for winter on the Gold Coast, Australia, where he now works, is quite reserved when we meet. I wonder whether that’s partly down to the doctor-patient thing. But as we get going, I find this and his matter-of-fact way of relating the events to be quite calming.

I’m particularly struck by the risk that was posed by the state of my lungs – I hadn’t realised at the time that this was the most serious and immediate threat to me, having been under the impression that the greatest danger had been the pelvic bleeding. The latter is something that leads to fatalities among too many cyclists, and improving the way it is treated at the scene has been the subject of much research. But then, three years down the line, I’m still making discoveries about what happened to me on that day.

The terms he uses as he explains the situation pass over my head. The meaning, however, is clear enough: you were very, very ill. Intellectually, I was aware of that. This brings it close to home, however. Except that, of course, thanks in no small part to Dr Shirran, that is as far as it got. Death didn’t claim its prize.

When we shake hands, I simply say thank you and then he shocks me by saying the same: “It’s an honour to meet you.”

I reply with the obvious: “Seriously, the honour’s mine.”

After hearing the gory details, it all gets easier. I ask him about his life. He asks me about mine.

He was supposed to be flying as an observer today, having moved out to Australia to do a similar job, although he is mainly land-based over there.

The weather has prevented that – the helicopter uses more fuel in the heat and can’t, therefore, carry a passenger, even one who is there in a professional capacity.

Surprisingly, he doesn’t get to fly much on the Gold Coast. “They’re so used to moving big loads around in big helicopters,” he says. “Except in Sydney [where there are several air ambulances like London’s] they don’t tend to use smaller helicopters.”

The operation he now works with was, in fact, the one that responded to the late Steve “Crocodile Hunter” Irwin, the TV naturalist, after he was pierced in the chest by the stingray barb that led to his death while filming.

Not being able to fly today means that he has brought his family along for a tour. His mother says he shouldn’t be so modest. She credits him with saving her life, too, when, as a junior doctor, he took on a consultant to get her on a new drug treatment that blew away her cancer and has kept it at bay.

Doing that takes some guts in the hierarchical medical world. “He just said to her: ‘wouldn’t you want the best for your mum?’ ” she tells me, all smiles.

Dr Shirran looks a little embarrassed at the praise. “That was a team effort, too,” he says. “I just played a small part.”

That is also what he says to me. But his mother is right. He shouldn’t be so modest. He really shouldn’t.

As we take our leave, the panic has gone. It has been replaced by something else. Instead of feeling sick and frightened every time I think about how close to dying I came, there is now a certain amount of pride. I was tough enough to survive. Albeit with a lot of help.

Dwelling in the past isn’t terribly constructive and I owe it to Dr Shirran and the other medics to break free from it. Talking to him has underscored that.

The meeting wasn’t a cure-all. There are no quick fixes, and dealing with the events that day is still a work in progress. But it has helped.