Patient Story - Jeff Kai Fong

While Christmas Eve 2000 seems a long time ago, for Jeff Kai Fong it feels like yesterday.

That’s because all those years ago he engaged in a freak accident in a forestry block that led to his quad instantly pitching down a bank where he had a head on with a pine tree.

The instantly visible injuries were a compound wound to his smashed left kneecap and a grossly disfigured left femur. It was snapped on impact as he was thrown over the handlebars when the quad stopped dead and its front bull bars wrapped around the mature pinus radiata.

Jeff was convinced his leg had been ripped off.

Upon finding Jeff, his fellow rider stabilised him as best as possible, applied tourniquets to his upper and lower leg and rode out of the forestry block to seek help.

Making it to the first neighbour in a remote area of Pīpīwai, 111 was called and the remote and hard-to-access nature of the accident was relayed to the operator.

The Northland Westpac Rescue Helicopter was put on standby and Hato Hone St John Ambulance staff met one of the rescuers at the end of the forestry track, so they could be taken by four-wheel-drive to attend to Jeff, where neighbours and a local nurse were already on the scene comforting him.

Three hours and 35 minutes after impact, Jeff was winched 90 metres up and out of the forest (the longest winch Northland’s air ambulance service had done at that point) by late afternoon, flown to Whangārei Base Hospital and was in an induced coma by Christmas Day. On three occasions over the next week, complications almost resulted in Jeff dying.

“My rehab and learning to walk again was a long process and I have been competing internationally in archery for years now which has helped with my fitness, strength and wellbeing,” says Jeff.

During his lengthy recovery and rehab, Jeff took a break from medicine and focussed on medical writing. He had rekindled his GP career by 2002 and retired in 2021 at age 58, when he took up truck driving and dabbling in digger driving and drain laying.

“I was sick of my colleague’s reluctance to step up in the earlier phases of the COVID era, so I pulled the pin. In hindsight, I always thought I handled stress really well but it was not until I was out of medicine for a year that I realised what a toll it had taken on me,” says Jeff.

Having worked as an Urgent Care Physician at private A&M clinics (Accident and Medical) in Auckland, Jeff knows well the value of rescue helicopter services.

He vividly remembers calling for a helicopter at Wairoa Hospital to medivac a nurse with severe lacerations who was bleeding out. A blood transfusion was essential prior to departure as she recorded the lowest blood count Jeff had ever seen in his career. She survived and returned to work at Wairoa hospital.

As he has reflected back on his career, Jeff feels it is timely to put his hand up again to be a champion of the Northland Westpac Rescue Helicopter.

“I may well have died after my accident because I had lost two thirds of my blood volume from the fractured femur and I suffered a fat embolus from the fractured femur with subsequent pneumonia, sepsis, and multi-organ failure. My family was called to my ICU bed on Christmas Day as my body was failing.

“I crashed on Christmas Eve and after four days on a ventilator, I finally got to an orthopaedic ward where I noticed several rescue helicopter landings on the roof everyday over the holiday period.

“It was later discovered several large bones in my left foot were found to be shattered but still in correct anatomical shape a few weeks later.

“It took a decade before I was confident to jog on my damaged leg. My eye’s iris injury and the seemingly intractable upper back pain was only settled after engaging the services of a skilled Osteopath - reinforcing my belief that orthodox medicine didn’t have all the answers.

“The whole experience of being a trauma patient, the subsequent surgeries, and the long recovery definitely made me a better doctor. Seeing the medical system from a patient’s point of view also highlighted the challenges in our health system,” says Jeff.

Jeff knows that flying patients quickly to a trauma centre from rural areas is often a matter of life and death. Receiving hospital care within the golden hour significantly improves their chances of survival.

“Having learnt to fly helicopters I could appreciate the skill of the Northland Westpac Rescue Helicopter crew. The smoothness of the winching was surreal and the landing at Whangārei Base Hospital was the gentlest I had ever experienced.

“For anyone who lives or holidays in Northland, I cannot encourage them enough to help fund the service by donating what they can, or by volunteering.”