After three months of treatment and rehabilitation, including a period in an intensive care unit, Supornnee Kittirattana is now learning how to walk using her prosthetic leg, which she refers to as her “new leg”.
On June 29th, Supornnee accidentally fell into a gap on a malfunctioning moving walkway at Don Mueang airport in Bangkok. She became trapped, bleeding profusely from her injured leg, for about 45 minutes before she was extracted by EMTs and sent to nearby hospital for emergency treatment. As a result of her ordeal, her badly injured left leg had to be amputated at the knee to save her life.
Recalling the tragic event in a recent interview with Thai PBS, Supornnee said that, because of her inner strength, she managed to survive the excruciating pain for about 45 minutes, as she waited desperately to be freed from the gap under the travellator.
She said that all agencies concerned, both private and government, should learn from her traumatic experience, that they must regularly check their escalators and moving walkways, ensuring that they are safe and functioning properly, to avoid a repetition of her terrifying and painful ordeal.
She thanked her family, including her three children, and medical personnel for their moral and physical support, which gave her the strength needed to overcome her ordeal.
Supornnee recalled that she felt like being born again after she woke up in the intensive care unit, adding, however, that she will still have to take quite some time to get used to her “new leg”.
She also said that she has not yet told her father, who is now blind, or her mother about the loss of her leg, adding that she will tell them at the right time.
The Airports of Thailand Company (AOT) has pledged to take care of her medical bills resulting from the accident. The amount of compensation is now being worked out by the two parties.
