Parents of Nikita Battye praise life-saving air ambulance

Sep 19 2009 by Rob Pattinson, The Journal

THE parents of a schoolgirl whose skull was fractured when she was kicked in the head by a horse told last night of their terror that they would lose their "gorgeous" daughter.

For eight days, four-year-old Nikita Battye lay fighting for life in a coma after the freak accident as her parents prayed they would see her infectious smile again.

Now doctors have told John and Tina Battye their daughter has been taken off the critical list. Last night the couple praised the medics they credit with saving their little girl’s life and told of Tina’s desperate mile-long walk home cradling her severely injured daughter in her arms.

The County Durham schoolgirl remains in intensive care, at James Cook Hospital, Teesside, after being moved from the children’s high dependency unit.

Medics are attempting to wean her off drugs used to keep her in the induced coma while her brain recovered.

Nikita suffered a fractured skull when a gust of wind frightened one of the three family horses she was helping her mum feed, last Tuesday.

The ‘freak accident’ happened on only her second day of school.

Last night dad John said his daughter would not be alive without the Great North Air Ambulance.

The emergency crew air-lifted Nikita to treatment from the family’s remote home, in the Durham Dales village of Butterknowle, near Bishop Auckland.

John, 45, a community garden manager, said: "When I saw her lifted into the back of the helicopter, I thought my child was going to die.

"Even when we got to the hospital and we saw her lying there I thought I was going to lose my child.

"It was horrible not knowing what was happening. They couldn’t reassure us she would be OK because with a head injury you just can’t tell, you just don’t know.