Paul Young rushed to hospital with huge blood loss after horror holiday fall
Eighties pop icon Paul Young has spoken of the horror fall he suffered on holiday in Greece, which left him with multiple leg fractures and needing three emergency blood transfusions
Eighties pop sensation Paul Young has opened up about a horror fall he suffered during a Greek holiday that resulted in multiple fractures to his leg and a stay in intensive care, where he underwent three emergency blood transfusions. The Wherever I Lay My Hat singer's stay on the picturesque Greek island of Santorini turned into a nightmare less than a day in when he took a nasty fall down a set of outdoor hotel steps en route to breakfast.
In an exclusive chat with the Daily Mirror, 69 year old Paul recalled: "It had been spitting with rain. The going under foot, as they say, was quite good as I was walking on the flat, but when I got to the top of the steps, as soon as I put my foot on the first step, my leg slipped out from underneath me. I fell and my leg cracked as soon as I hit the step."
Paul Young was rushed to hospital
He continued, "Once I'd gone down, I couldn't stop. There was no handrail, so nothing to hold on to. I just thought, 'I've lost control'. I fell down to three or four more steps, fracturing my leg again and again. It was a multi-fracture. When I came to a stop, I looked down and my leg was in a slightly weird position, underneath my bottom. I thought 'I don't like that. My leg shouldn't be like that', so I tried to straighten it up and that's when the pain started''."
Paul's wife Lorna, 53, sounded the alarm at the luxurious De Sol Hotel and Spa, leading to Paul being rushed to Santorini General Hospital in Karterados. It was there that X-rays found he had received a series of fractures to his left thigh bone.
He recounts the harrowing experience: "All the multi-fractures were right at the top in the femur, the leg's biggest bone, by the ball joint so it was very worrying. The fractures were so close to each other, there was a danger of the leg snapping. The only medication they had was paracetamol. I was screaming out all the time and most of the time I had my eyes shut because the pain was terrible", reports the Mirror.
There were no surgeons at the hospital, so Paul spent nine agonising hours on a gurney in the corridor, trying to coordinate a private jet to take him to Athens for critical treatment. Come morning, he was finally in surgery at Mediterranea hospital, where doctors fitted a metal rod inside his femur, anchored with screws at both ends.
Paul has recounted the painful ordeal (Image: Getty Images)
However, horrifyingly, the star remembers regaining consciousness mid-operation. "I remember coming out of the anaesthetic because I remember thinking 'I can feel this and it's painful'. I could hear lots of banging and drilling going on but I couldn't get the words to say anything. I think when they went into the leg, the procedure was not as easy as they thought it was going to be. They only had so much time and I think there's a point where they can't give you any more anaesthetic, so maybe [as the anaesthetic wore off] they had to rush to finish the job off."
Paul detailed how he was left with a "messy" wound and spent the following two days in intensive care after a severe haemorrhage. He required three blood transfusions to compensate for the blood he lost.
He shared: "For the first few days, there was so much blood loss, they were changing the sheets every day. A lot of people were coming in to look at the wound and they were all speaking Greek so I didn't know what they were saying. I was semi-delirious a lot of the time because of the blood loss. It was a frightening time."
After spending two weeks in the hospital, Paul, still battling anaemia, flew back to the UK on a private jet that cruised below the usual 30,000+ feet altitude of commercial flights to minimise the risk of a potentially fatal blood clot, which can develop at high altitude exposure.
Once back, he underwent further monitoring at London's Cleveland Clinic for two days, where he received assistance with using crutches and navigating stairs. He then returned to his home in Dunstable, Bedfordshire, where he focused on regaining strength and relearning to walk.
However, in a crushing turn of events at the end of November, Paul suffered a major setback when a bolt in the rod supporting his leg broke, causing the metal implant to shift downwards.
Paul said: "The pain was tremendous," and shared how a setback shattered his recovery: "I'd just started to feel like I was getting better. I was using just one crutch around the kitchen and had started to drive my car again. Then I woke up one morning in agony. I thought, 'Why aren't the painkillers working?'."
After enduring another gruelling 10-hour surgery to mend the broken fixture, Paul reflected on the experience: "I've never had something like this happen to me before. It's the worst injury I've ever had."
Fast forward five months from the horror tumble, and following a regimen of physiotherapy, hydrotherapy rehab sessions, and daily resistance band workouts, Paul has triumphantly ditched the crutches. Despite grappling with numbness in his left knee and frustration over not being able to "dance on stage" just yet, he maintains a mostly upbeat outlook and can reflect on the accident with good humour.