- When Tominey Reid, 21, from Melbourne, Vic, was getting some air on her balcony, the unthinkable happened a quick call with her boyfriend left her fighting for her life.
- Tominey fell seven storeys after attempting to retrieve her dropped phone which had landed on the balcony below.
- Now one year since her accident, Tominey is learning to walk again after suffering serious injuries in the balcony fall, which left her facing a 10 per cent chance of survival.
Here Tominey tells her story in her own words.
Hearing my phone buzz on my bedside table, I answered the call excitedly.
It was around 1.30am on July 2023 and my boyfriend Kyle, then 25, was calling from Greece.
I’d had a hectic day, babysitting my hairdressing client’s kids in the morning, before working nine to five at my hairdressing job, and I was utterly spent.
So while Kyle told me about his holiday, I breathed in some fresh air on the balcony to wake myself up and got comfortable leaning up against the balustrade.
‘How am I going to get myself out of this?’
But I was still half asleep, and suddenly my phone slipped out of my hand, landing around three metres down on the balcony of the apartment below.
Going downstairs, I knocked on the door of the level six apartment but there was no answer.
Back up on my balcony, I knew Kyle would be worried about our call ending abruptly, and set about making a plan to get my phone back.
Keeping my left hand on the waist-high railing for support, I leaned forwards over the edge to scope out the situation.
Suddenly, I lost my footing.
With my body weight already so far over the edge, I toppled, head first.
Scrambling, I managed to keep my grip on the edge of the railing and flipped my body around to face the concrete panel of the balcony.
Then I painstakingly reached up with my other hand to grab on to the top of the balustrade.
‘I was going to die.’
As I clung on for dear life, my mind raced.
How am I going to get myself out of this? I fretted.
In total shock, I didn’t even think to call out to my neighbours for help.
But try as I might, I just didn’t have the upper body strength to lift myself back over the railing.
Dangling precariously from the seventh floor, around 21 metres above the ground, my palms grew more sweaty with each second that passed.
And, with my front pressed hard against the concrete wall, there was no way to swing myself forwards in the hope I could land on the balcony below.
As adrenaline started to wear off and the ache in my arms intensified, a sick feeling formed in the pit of my stomach.
My time was running out.
‘There’s a 10 per cent chance of Tominey surviving.’
With no way back up, I have no choice but to go down, I realised, terrified.
I was going to die.
Thinking of Kyle and my family, I made peace with the thought of never seeing them again.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I counted to three.
Unable to hold on any longer, I let got and plunged towards the ground, flipping around and around.
Then my world went black.
Coming to, I realised I was in hospital, and my mum Sarah, 48, was by my side.
‘I’m so glad you’re okay!’ she cried, explaining I’d been in a coma for five days.
Mum told me said that, as I plummeted through the air, I’d hit the glass fence in front of our building, before landing face first in a bed of rocks on the ground level.
‘There’s a chance you’ll never walk again.’
While the fence had broken my fall, the impact had snapped my right femur, causing it to pierce 11cm through the back of my thigh, severing my femoral artery and sciatic nerve in the process.
Thankfully, a retired police officer who lived next door heard the sickening thud of my body slamming against the rocks, and rushed to help me.
Applying pressure to my wound, he called emergency.
By the time the ambo arrived, I needed to be shocked back to life after my heart stopped.
I was taken to The Alfred Hospital, Melbourne, where doctors called my mum.
‘There’s a 10 per cent chance of Tominey surviving,’ they’d said, urging Mum to come from her home in Phillip Island to say goodbye.
‘I thought I was coming to identify your body,’ Mum sobbed.
‘You’ve got this!’
In addition to breaking my leg, I’d also torn the major artery in my heart, and ligaments in my right knee, shattered my right tibia and fibula, five vertebrae in my back, and had suffered three brain bleeds.
I required 11 bags of blood.
A team of surgeons had worked tirelessly to save my life, including fitting a filter in my heart valve to prevent blood clots, performing a full knee reconstruction and replacing my damaged sciatic nerve using a nerve from my left thigh.
Heartbreakingly, my right leg was completely paralysed.
‘There’s a chance you’ll never walk again,’ a doctor said gently.
I was devastated, but I knew I was lucky to have survived.
In fact, the docs said it was a miracle I was still here.
When Kyle learned about my accident, he raced home.
My friends Grace, Kayla, Keely, and Gramercy, all 21, came to visit too.
After five weeks in hospital, I was discharged in a wheelchair, in time to celebrate my 21st birthday at the local pub with my family and friends.
Three weeks later, thanks to daily physio, I defied the odds and took my first wobbly steps using a leg brace.
‘You’ve got this! Mum cheered.
Sadly Kyle and I split shortly after, but we remain close friends.
A year on, I still have very little feeling in my right leg, but I’m hopeful it will come back in time as my nerve grows.
Wearing my leg brace full time, I walk with an obvious limp, I’m very wobbly and fall over a lot.
My life will never be the same, but I’m just so grateful to be alive!
