When Leon Adams went sky diving in the Somerset region in 2019, he had no idea the end of his adventure would land him in a two month hospital stay.
Almost two years later West Moreton Metro and the PA Hospital used social media to try and find a key responder who by a fortunate twist of fate came to Mr Adams side.
An avid skydiver who just a year earlier survived a breast cancer scare, Mr Adams’ accident on April 7, 2019, came after a faulty piece of hired equipment resulted in him landing on his side at more than 50 kilometres an hour.
"I just landed really badly - I hit the ground at about 50 to 60 kilometres an hour on an angle, on my side, and bounced about eight and a half metres," Mr Adams said.
“I broke both femur and tibia on both legs, three vertebrae, all my pelvis, and sacrum - just shattered it.
"I hit the ground three times before I stopped … when I was going over, I felt my camera on my helmet dig into the ground, so I was only a couple of inches away from my neck snapping as well, I think.”
When faced with a life threatening situation such as Mr Adams was in, many people would wish for a guardian angel or a miracle to save them.
In an unbelievable dose of destiny, an off-duty Queensland Ambulance Service paramedic just happened to be sky diving outside Toogoolawah that same day.
Rushing to Leon's aid, the paramedic quickly called an ambulance and notified emergency services of the need for the rescue helicopter to pick Leon up and take him straight to the Princess Alexandra Hospital.
All the services responded and Leon spent the next two months in the hospital’s trauma and rehabilitation units.
"There was a doctor and a nurse who were skydivers, they rushed to me straight away, and got straight onto the ambulance and the rescue helicopter,” Mr Adams said.
"It was great to have medical professionals like that there because they jumped straight on it, they stopped me from moving.
“My femur had been snapped straight in half and it was trying to stick out my leg and all I wanted to do was move. They did what they could to get me more comfortable, and to get me mentally present which stopped me from hurting myself anymore.
"The ambulance got to me first and the helicopter came a bit after, they put me on the helicopter and sent me off to the PA, where they just fixed me up for the first few months in the hospital.
“They were not even able to roll me on my side or anything like that because I was just in massive pain.”
After recovering, Leon set out to find the medical professional who had first come to his aid, but reached a dead end.
Metro South Health and the PA Hospital decided to tell Leon’s story online in hope that they could find the mystery helper, who Mr Adams originally thought was a Princess Alexandra Hospital doctor, however after some searching it was found he was a QAS member.
“Turns out that the first-responder was an off-duty QAS paramedic but naturally he was always going to send Leon to PA Hospital for trauma care given it is a key specialty at PAH so this would have been what Leon was gravitating to at the time of the accident,” a Metro South Health spokesperson said.
“The trauma team had quite the task to get Leon back on his feet with the two-month hospital stay.”
Mr Adams has since become a supporter of the PA Research Foundation as a thank you to the hospital.
"I'm just really glad the PA and the staff there are the ones still going along with my ongoing treatment and that I'm going there for my next surgery on my leg, because the pain thing really gets me now and they take such good care of me.
"I know that the surgeons who worked on me did such a good job of fixing me up, for me to even be walking is just unbelievable.
“I actually can't believe it, I'm lucky I didn't die."