Dying to feed you: Tim fell 14ft and lost part of his skull

Norfolk farmer Tim Papworth spent five weeks in a coma and had part of his skull removed after falling from a ladder.

Tim took an easy route to a job, that on the face of it looked simple, but it cost him dearly. It took a year of rehabilitation, in which his wife had to remove the work guns from the house as he was so depressed.

His advice is to take the more time to do the job and think about what you’re doing .

Watch the video of Tim telling his story and read the full report below.

Videographer: Richard Stanton

It was mid-October – one of the busiest months on the farm. My alarm went off at 5.45am, which is normal for me every day of the week. I got up, got dressed, went downstairs, and had a cup of tea.

I look after the beef cattle at Lodge Farm in the village of Felmingham – between the market towns of Alysham and North Walsham, in north Norfolk. I also look after the vegetable enterprise – mainly potatoes.

I had a telephone conversation with my cousin, who I farm with, to sort out what we were doing for the day. We went to see the potato harvester first – to make sure the guys in the field were lifting the potatoes correctly.

Then I went to the store to see my store manager. He told me that he had a slight problem – that it was dark and dangerous because the light bulb had gone. I went up the ladder to put in a new bulb so the job would be sorted.

Ladder

I didn’t think at the time that there might be a safer and less risky way of doing it. I thought I would take the easy route and use a ladder. I don’t know how I fell, but I fell about 14ft – I couldn’t grab anything and I fell very badly.

I was told it took two people to hold me down because I was in this fight or flight mode. I was hurt and I wanted to get the hell out. I was airlifted to hospital where they put me in an induced coma.

I had two bleeds on the brain and multiple fractures to my skull, a punctured lung, several broken ribs and a small broken bone in my neck. Surgeons had to operate to ease the pressure on my brain – and eventually they ended up replacing part of my skull with a titanium plate.

Hospital

The first memory I have after the accident is waking up in Addenbrooke’s hospital. I’d been in a coma for five weeks, with pipes and tubes down my throat. They fitted me with a voice box that I could press to push some air through so I could speak.

My left arm didn’t work – it was hanging there because I had hit the right side of my head, which had paralysed the left side of my body. It was a good year before I was able to work it properly.

It affected my whole family and work colleagues – everybody really. They all had to help me to eat, to get dressed, to do anything. There were times when

I thought the best thing I could do was just to get out of there.

Mental toll

It started to play on my mental health. My wife was advised to have the guns removed from the house because there were some really dark moments where I thought I was just a drain on the family. Fortunately, I didn’t have the means to be able to go through with it.

The one thing I would suggest that people do is to take more time. Think about what you’re doing. And then take more time to do the job. Do it properly, and don’t trust luck.

Luck is nothing you can actually bank on. I’ve been lucky – very lucky. You can’t say to someone, “Oh, you’ll be alright if you’re lucky.” You might not be as lucky as me.