A 64-year-old man from Pattishall, Northamptonshire, has thanked The Air Ambulance Service (TAAS) after suffering a horrific hand injury while helping his daughter with her campervan project earlier this year.
In March 2025, Joe Hough was using an electric circular handsaw when disaster struck and he sliced through the ulna bone in his hand. “I looked down and saw so much blood. I knew it was serious,” Joe said.
Home alone, Joe ran to a neighbour’s house for help. His quick-thinking neighbour and her son created a makeshift tourniquet to stem the bleeding while others called 999. A land ambulance arrived first and applied a medical tourniquet, before The Air Ambulance Service helicopter landed in a nearby field and the crew reached Joe on foot.
“The doctor took charge straight away,” Joe recalled. “They gave me morphine and ketamine for the pain and tightened the tourniquet. The last thing I remember was being strapped into the helicopter.”
The flight to University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire took just 11 minutes. Joe underwent over 15 hours of surgery in total, after severing an artery, nine tendons, and two nerves in his hand. “The surgeons told me my hand will never be the same again, but I’m just grateful to still have it,” he said.
Joe and his family have since visited the charity’s base and plan to take part in an Ultra Challenge on the Isle of Wight next spring, hoping to raise enough money to fund a helicopter mission.
“I can’t believe The Air Ambulance Service is a charity! It’s incredible what they do,” he added. “Without them and everyone else who helped me, I definitely wouldn’t have my hand.”
