Andrew Fifita has revealed he messaged his wife from the back of an ambulance to say goodbye as he thought he was going to die from a horror on-field throat injury.
Fifita was playing for Cronulla in an NRL game against Newcastle in August when he received an accidental elbow to the throat from an opponent.
He was initially able to sit on the sideline and shout at teammates as the game progressed, but after full-time his condition deteriorated rapidly to the point paramedics had to begin medical procedures on the football field while the other players were in the dressing sheds.
Fifita would spend five days in an induced coma in a Brisbane hospital following emergency surgery on the injury.
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Now, he has spoken to Nine’s Danny Weidler and revealed scary new details of the ordeal.
Fifita revealed the moment in the ambulance when he thought he wouldn’t survive.
“I ended up getting the doc, I said ‘doc I need your phone’. He said ‘what?’ and I was like ‘I really need your phone’,” he said.
“I ended up writing a nice text to my missus (saying) how much I love her.
“She knows the rules. I just told her how much I loved her. (I said) please show the kids these messages when they get older.
“I honestly didn’t think I was going to make it there.”
Fifita was placed in a coma on arrival at the hospital and so he has no recollection of the ensuing five days.
But his doctors have pressed upon him just how lucky he is to be alive.
“They ended up cutting my neck. He said (if they did it) a minute later I would have died,” Fifita said.
“Then they realised they clipped an artery in my neck, and I was bleeding all through my lungs, so I was drowning in my own blood.
“It’s surreal. It is scary.
“After sitting with the doc, and he’s telling me these stories of what actually happened, he said the trauma will be real and once it hits you it hits you.
“It’s taken a long time to process it and I’m still not through it. When you sit in front of a doctor and he tells you, ‘four times I went home at night, Andrew, and didn’t think you were going to make it’… it’s one of those things.”
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