On Sunday 25 August, our son Kenny and his family were travelling home to Aberdeen from Skye when they were involved in a serious road collision. Fortunately, the children were well protected by their car seats and they and Laura suffered only minor physical injuries. Kenny, however, took the brunt of the impact and suffered extensive and life-threatening injuries. He was airlifted to Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow where he received excellent medical and nursing care. After two weeks in hospital, Kenny has now returned home to continue his recovery, although this will be a lengthy process.

As a family, we are grateful to all the emergency services, and to the Major Trauma Unit, including doctors, nurses, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, psychologists and the surgeon who rebuilt Kenny’s right foot (and probably others whom we didn’t meet) for their care and attention, not only with the patient himself, but also the family members. This is truly an excellent resource, staffed by some wonderful people, for the people of Scotland.

However, getting patients to this amazing centre is a priority, and doing so quickly saves lives. Scotland has large remote and island areas, from which road transport can take several hours. The Scottish Ambulance Service operates two publicly funded helicopters to provide essential rapid transfer of patients to hospital, one based in Glasgow and one in Inverness. Working in partnership with SAS are two further helicopters, one stationed in Aberdeen, one in Perth, operated by Scotland’s Charity Air Ambulance, which are funded entirely by charitable donations. https://www.scaa.org.uk

Two helicopters were deployed to this incident, with one taking the driver of the other vehicle to Aberdeen whilst the other transferred Kenny to Glasgow. This demonstrates how a single incident can employ the entire publicly funded air ambulance capacity in Scotland. The availably of additional resources to attend further incidents, or to complement the work of SAS, could be the difference between life and death. Our recent experience has (literally) brought home to us how important this resource is, especially in the case of major trauma.

Fortunately, thanks to the excellent care he received (and his own determination), Kenny is on the mend, although full recovery is going to take a lot of time.

On 13 October, I will run in the Loch Rannoch Half Marathon in support of SCAA, as a way of expressing our appreciation of the service and the lives it saves.

We, Kenny’s family, and the charity, Scotland’s Charity Air Ambulance, appreciate your support.