A Scots gran who owes her life to paramedics says she feared her daughter was going to find her dead body following a horrific brain haemorrhage.
Tricia Fearns was decorating a bedroom at her home in Wigtownshire when she suddenly collapsed to the floor.
The 52-year-old woke herself up in a state of confusion when she was snoring loudly, while still holding a hacksaw she had been using to cut a curtain poll.
The grandmother-of-one knew that something wasn't right - and the first thing that panicked her was the thought of her daughter Sarah finding her dead.
Tricia told the Record: "It was all out of the blue, I wasn't expecting it at all - I felt absolutely fine.
"I was decorating a bedroom and was cutting a curtain poll when it happened. I woke up with the hack saw still in my hand - it was really scary.
"I live on my own and my right leg was paralysed so I knew there was something not quite right.
"I couldn't suss it out and then I thought, what a minute here - I don't want my daughter finding my body.
"It's a bit dramatic, but it just gave me such a fright.
"That was my last thought, she's going to find my body and I don't want that."
The terrifying incident happened on June 6 last year.
The customer service worker at Stena Line's ferry port in Cairnryan dialled 999 and paramedics were there within 10 minutes.
They managed to make their way into her home through the back door, which was thankfully left unlocked, while Tricia lay paralysed on the floor.
Ambulance crews raced her to Galloway Community Hospital in Stranraer for scans before she was blue lighted up to the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow.
During the procedure Tricia was slipping in and out of consciousness.
She said: "I remember the guys shouting my name and then going down the path to the ambulance, but that's about it.
"There's lots of blanks. I took a helluva pain in my head and then it all kicked off from there.
"I woke up snoring, which was strange because I've never snored before and that was that - I couldn't get up off the floor.
"The ambulance service were really quick, I live in rural Wigtownshire about 10 minutes from Stranraer - so for them to get here and get me into the community hospital then to Glasgow so fast was incredible."
Tricia's daughter Sarah, grandson William, 2, and eight sisters have been supporting her since the terrifying ordeal - and she feels she is on the mend.
Medics have blamed Tricia's smoking for the cause of the aneurysm and she said: "I have given up since then but I used to smoke between 10 to 15 a day.
"I've still got quite a way to go because I've still got some work to be done on the original aneurysm and now they've found another one on the opposite side of my head.
"I still feel like I'm a ticking time bomb - but I'm a helluva lot better than I was and I'm so much more fortunate than some other people who have had aneurysms and are not here.
"But I am here - thanks to the ambulance service, the hospital and the NHS - and I'm hoping to return to work before my sick line runs out in June.
"I'm very, very lucky."
Tricia's sister Ann Robertson added: "You have no idea how truly grateful we are to those ambulance crew for getting to her so quickly and getting her to the hospital and saving her life.
"We will be forever in your debt."
