By Megan Baadijes – IOL news
A comatose man’s family are furious after an ambulance transporting him to another hospital crashed and no one told them.
Tobias Lewis, 41, escaped death the first time when he was hit by a suspected drunk driver in Bredasdorp at 4.35am on Saturday.
Then, later the same day when he was on his way to a second hospital, the emergency vehicle he was travelling in was hit by a car on the N2 close to Khayelitsha just after 6pm.
Although the Bredasdorp family knew about the first incident, they were shocked to hear about the second accident because authorities had failed to notify them.
The second accident occurred when Tobias was being transferred from Otto Du Plessis Hospital in Bredasdorp to Tygerberg Hospital on September 11.
His stepmother Marta Lewis, 47, says doctors declared him brain dead in Bredasdorp but later transferred him to Tygerberg Hospital after his condition miraculously improved.
“We went to hospital immediately after we heard about the [first] accident – the doctors told us that he was brain dead,” she says.
“We spent hours at his bedside just praying; and later he started responding to touch and sound.
“Doctors didn’t understand how he came out of his coma but said they could do nothing for him and transferred him to Tygerberg Hospital.”
Marta says they spent hours waiting for an ambulance from Cape Town to take Tobias to Tygerberg and when it arrived, they were praying he would make a full recovery.
But exactly the opposite happened – a car collided so heavily with the ambulance that the emergency vehicle is allegedly a write-off.
“The Monday after he was taken to Tygerberg, my husband received a call from someone asking for details of the ambulance accident,” says Marta.
“We had no idea about an ambulance accident because no one informed us.”
Full of questions, the family drove to Cape Town and were shocked to see Tobias.
“I couldn’t believe what he looked like,” she says.
“His face was swollen so badly, we could only identify him by his hair – he didn’t look so bad in Bredasdorp.”
Marta says none of the nurses could answer her questions.
“In Bredasdorp a nurse told us Tobias is lucky to be alive after surviving both accidents,” she says.
Marta says her husband is having a hard time accepting what happened to Tobias because he lost his younger son less than six months ago in a car crash.
“Tobias’ brother died in a car accident a few months ago, so my husband is having a tough time going through all of this,” she says.
“All we’d like to know is why no one from the hospital told us about the accident – he looks worse than he did the first time and we don’t know if it’s because he got hurt again.”
The driver responsible for Tobias’ first accident, Andrew Visagie, says he’s also living in uncertainty because no one knows if Tobias was injured again.
“I feel bad because of what happened, everything happened so fast that morning and I apologised to his family,” he says.
Andrew was arrested and charged with culpable homicide the day of the accident because police declared Tobias dead on the scene, but the charge was later changed to drunk driving.
“I stayed at the scene and police did a blood test because I told them I had something to drink that day,” he admits.
“Now I’m worried that this ambulance accident wasn’t reported.
“We don’t know if his condition became worse because of the second accident or the first one.”
An Overberg EMS official, who declined to be named, confirmed the accident and says that an investigation is underway.
Tobias has since been transferred back to Otto Du Plessis Hospital and is still in a coma. – Daily Voice
