Exmouth resident Leanne Schofield thanks RFDS for saving her life after near-fatal asthma attack

After a routine camping trip to Kalbarri, Leanne Schofield was barely able to breathe by the time she had driven home to Exmouth. If it weren’t for the Royal Flying Doctor Service she wouldn’t be able to tell her story today. Ms Schofield and her husband Darren had been camping in Kalbarri in February this year when she became short of breath during the road trip home. Though she was diagnosed with asthma when she was a child, Ms Schofield said she had never experienced an asthma attack in her life. “We had the dog in the car so I thought it could be allergies, there had been strong wind in Kalbarri too so I thought it might be that,” she said. Once they had made the eight-hour drive home, Ms Schofield thought a shower would solve the problem. “The steam usually helps clear everything out, but I got out and I was still having trouble breathing,” she said. “I said to my husband — ‘I think I need to go to hospital’.” The pair arrived at Exmouth Hospital and were given a grim assessment. “The doctor said, 15 more minutes, and I would have been gone,” Ms Schofield said. “I remember sitting up, because when I lay down there was this pressure in my chest. “I held on to my husband’s arm and I said ‘I think I’m going to die’.” This is where her memory of the incident stops. Ms Schofield was given oxygen which made her condition worsen rapidly, and administered ketamine to make her muscles relax. She was put onto a Royal Flying Doctor Service flight about 9pm and flown to Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth. “They just calmed me and reassured me and made me feel that everything’s going to be fine. I still get a bit teary about it,” Ms Schofield said. The Schofields had only found out a few weeks earlier that their son was expecting their first grandchild. “You’ve got to pull out of this,” Mr Shofield kept saying to his wife. “You’ve got to become a nanna.” Wednesday marks Flying Doctor Day, the 96th anniversary of the founding of the organisation which now utilises 22 aircraft across WA. The organisation sends out 28 flights on average every day. Chief executive Judith Barker said the RFDS in WA was helping more people than ever before. “In 2023 we had our busiest year on record, transferring 10,270 patients and when we look at the data so far for 2024, it’s shaping up to be even busier,” she said. Ms Schofield describes the RFDS as “our angels in the sky”. “If it weren’t for them I wouldn’t be here today,” she said.