A
Swansdike woman is recovering in hospital today after a traumatic near-death
experience with a pancake.
Evie
Jemlettis, of Squinting Lane, was in the kitchen yesterday making pancakes, when
a routine toss went badly wrong.
“I
flipped the pancake into the air, just as I always do, but instead of falling
back into the pan, it fell on me,” said Evie, from her hospital bed.
The
pancake landed on her head, moulding itself instantly to her face and forming a
hermetic seal over her nose and mouth. Unconsciousness followed and Evie fell
to the ground, just minutes away from death by asphyxiation.
It
was then that family pet Usain Bolt, who was in the kitchen with her, took the
action that was to save her life.
“We
named him Usain Bolt because he was always running everywhere as a puppy,” explained
Evie’s husband Ted.
Seeing
his mistress lying motionless on the floor, the doughty dachshund realised that
something had gone terribly wrong.
“He
rushed to the telephone in the hall, knocked the receiver off its cradle with his nose and then
hit the speed dial button,” said Ted.
Exotica
enthusiast Ted was in the garden shed, looking through some old magazines he’d
collected as a teenager. Puzzled at receiving a call from home on his mobile,
he answered immediately.
“I
could hear Usain barking on the other end and immediately knew that something was
amiss,” the 43-year-old told the Observer.
“Luckily,
one of the things they taught him at obedience school was to bark twice in
response to the question: ‘Is this by any chance a pancake-related, life-threatening
emergency?’
“So
when he barked twice in quick succession, I was off down the garden faster than
the real Usain Bolt!”
Emergency
services were called and arrived within seconds, paramedics performing the Schwarzenegger
Manoeuvre on Evie as she lay on the kitchen floor. Only just conscious, she was
then rushed to the Anti-Batter Unit at Froghill General.
“It
was touch and go there for a while,” said a grateful Ted, as he sat by his wife’s bedside,
“Evie wouldn’t be here now had it not been for Usain’s quick-thinking.”
Asked
whether she would ever be cooking pancakes for the family again, Evie smiled weakly
and shook her head.
“No,
I don’t think so,” she said. “I think it’s time to admit that I’m a useless
tosser.”
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