Rachel Sumsion, 29, a mother-of-two, joined her husband on a fishing trip for the first time, and ended up saving his life when he had an epileptic seizure and fell into a lake.
Rachel acted quickly when her husband, Rob, 39, fell face down into a lake at Paulton, near Midsomer Norton in Somerset, during a peaceful evening fishing for carp. She leapt into the lake and trod water for a full 20 minutes whilst holding his head above water and screaming for help.
All the time Rachel struggled to support her husband, who was suffering convulsions, the couple’s two children, Jake, five, and Abbie, three, stood helpless and terrified on the bank.
Fortunately a passer-by heard Rachel’s cries for help and rushed over to pull the couple from the water and then called for an ambulance.
Rachel, from Bristol, said: “Normally I just drop my husband off at the lake and he sits down there on his own, but this time, luckily, I decided to take a walk with him. He complained of feeling a bit ill, so I told him to sit down. But as he got up and walked to the edge of the lake to start setting up his rods, he had a convulsion and fell unconscious into the water.”
Rachel is only 5ft tall and was unable to pull her 6ft tall husband out of the lake She admitted she struggled to keep his head above the surface and feared that both of them would drown.
“I was terrified that he was going to die,” Rachel said. “I didn’t know what was happening, it was very frightening. It was lucky he (the passer-by) turned up when he did.
“I don’t really feel brave, it was just instinct.”
Mr Sumsion, who has never had an epileptic seizure before and can’t remember anything of the ordeal, was taken to the Royal United Hospital in Bath.
He has made a full recovery, but is now receiving regular check-ups and has been advised not to go fishing on his own again.
Mr Sumsion said he was sure he would have died had his wife not been there to save him.
“I would have breathed in so much water that I would have been dead,” he said. She (my wife) deserves a bravery award.”
