The last thing Ann-Marie Cobb can remember is telling her family she was going upstairs to get her things ready for work.
When she came round three days later, she was on a ward at Salford Royal Hospital with no memory of how she got there.
Ann-Marie, 60, fractured her skull and suffered a massive brain haemorrhage after falling backwards from the second step of the stairs at her Stockport home.
It's thought Ann-Marie, a nurse, smashed the back of her head on the tiled floor in the freak accident in April last year.
When her family rushed to her aid she was unconscious and vomiting at the foot of the stairs.
One of the specialists who treated the mother-of-three described it as one of the worst brain injuries he'd seen.
For 10 days it was touch-and-go whether Ann-Marie would even survive.
But gradually her condition improved and after four weeks she was allowed to return home to Cheadle Hulme.
Remarkably just 10 months after falling Ann-Marie, who's been a nurse for more than 40 years and completed her training at Hope Hospital, as Salford Royal was then known, is now back at work.
But while her physical conditionhas improved greatly, the injury has taken a huge emotional and psychological toll.
She's also lost her sense of taste and smell, and been warned they may never return.
Ann-Marie said: "Emotionally it's really affected me.
"I get very low days where I'm not myself. It's quite dumb-founding to have go through it.
"I've always been a workaholic, always rushing around, and at work I'm back to my normal self, but I get very tired now. I'm bed by 8.30pm to 9pm every night.
"Things are getting better but it's not my normal life.
"I'm reliant on other people all the time. I'm a sociable person, but now I would rather sit on my own in the quiet.
"I'm not the person I was.
"I might find a new normal, but I may never go back to the old me."
Ann-Marie is still under the care of the hospital and will require regular scans for the foreseeable future.
But she says the injury has given her a whole new insight into her work and life itself.
"It's been earth-shattering for my two daughters who saw it all and my poor husband.
"I've always been good at my job, I've always had empathy for my patients, but when something like this happens to you personally you it makes you see it all in a new light.
"Nobody knows what life will throw at you.
"It's something that really makes you look at your life and appreciate what you've got."
Ann-Marie says she is determined to give something to the hospital and the medics who saved her life.
In April she's running the Manchester 10km in April with her daughters Lucy, 27 and Molly, 22, to raise money for the hospital.
She said: "I just want to try and do something to say a big thank you for the life I have got.
"From the consultant down to the porter, everybody was absolutely amazing.
"I may not run all the way round, but I'm determined to finish it."
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