How My Bifold Doors Nearly Killed Me. Its A Middle

There are certain aspirational things you tick off to show you’ve done OK in life. For some, it’s a nice car, five-star holidays or designer clothes.

For me, it was something much mundane: my double set of bifold doors.

They were my pride and joy – a window to the world, bringing the outside in all summer and letting gentle light cascade in throughout winter.

As a person from working-class stock, having a large kitchen with a granite island and, yes, those 5m bifold doors was something the 11-year-old me could never have dreamed of. I adored them. Until they nearly killed me.

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About a month ago, I was clearing up from dinner and putting plates in the dishwasher. I had the doors – which run the entire length of our kitchen – wide open due to the unseasonably warm October weather.

At about 7.15pm, I went to close them when I suddenly felt a searing pain.

Drat, I thought, I’ve caught the back of my heel on the door. It seemed I’d rammed the lowest metal edge of it onto my ankle; the sharp bit that clicks into place, making the doors sit flush when shut.

Expecting to see a small graze, I peered down at my left ankle… and gasped in horror.

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There, where the back of my heel once was, was a massive open wound, with cartilage and bone clearly visible. Then came the blood. It didn’t trickle but flew out, at angles. I instinctively clapped my hand over it, only for blood to cascade through my fingers, down my leg, onto the floor.

I staggered in, not knowing what to do.

My husband Cornel, 45, was at work as a pianist 100 miles away. My 12-year-old daughter Adriana was in the living room watching KPop Demon Hunters for the umpteenth time and my 16-year-old son Alex was upstairs doing his A-level homework.

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There was so much blood shooting from my ankle in terrifying, violent jets that I felt dizzy. So I lowered myself to the floor and shoved my leg in the air, knowing you need to elevate a wound. Only my phone… it was on the kitchen island so I couldn’t reach it.

I called to Adriana, who ran in. ‘Get Alex!’ I cried.

Taking one look at the small pool of blood around me, she froze and burst into tears. I urged her all would be well but to hurry up.

She came clattering back down the stairs seconds later with Alex, who shoved a tea towel around my ankle.

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‘Press hard,’ I grimaced, as he called 999, filling in the ambulance dispatcher urgently.

Meanwhile, the tea towel was slowly turning crimson.

‘Press another towel over the top,’ came the voice on the phone. ‘Keep pressing. The ambulance is on its way.’

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Hats off to our amazing NHS; the ambulance arrived, lights flashing, within 10 minutes. Two impossibly young and beautiful female paramedics strode in and soon had me attached to beeping heart monitors – I began to feel vaguely dizzy from blood loss and stress at this point. One of the paramedics peeled the towel back and told me the pressing of it had stemmed the bleeding, very possibly saving my life. ‘I can see your Achilles tendon, though,’ she said. ‘You did a pretty good job of cutting all the way through…’

Alex remained stoic and amazingly calm, but Adriana was hyperventilating in tears.

‘I thought you were going to die,’ she sobbed.

At hospital, another amazing NHS doctor put me on my front and cleaned my wound (it hurt a lot) and informed me it was a 6cm crescent that had cut through all the skin, the fatty tissue and had sliced into my Achilles sheath, the rich squishy bit that surrounds the tendon. Thankfully I had missed that, just.

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He was surprised something as mundane as bifold doors had done this although he and his colleague did discuss how the hinges, tracks and rollers that make them slide and shut so seamlessly must indeed be pretty sharp.

I was given seven stitches under local anaesthetic and then handed a pair of crutches.

‘No walking with your left foot flat for two weeks,’ he said. ‘Walk on tiptoes or wear a wedge shoe.’

Getting home several hours later, I found my kitchen tiles stained with blood and a heap of towels where I’d been lying hours earlier. Alex came down to greet me and gave me a rare hug.

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‘I think you might have saved my life,’ I said, holding him.

It was an emotional evening.

than six weeks have passed since then and I am recovering – although it hurts if I pull my ankle. I still can’t wear my beloved trainers as it rubs too much and it’s just easier to walk in a slight ankle boot heel than walking flat. I’m driving again but have a massive scar and there is no feeling in part of my ankle at all.

I look at my ‘middle-class’ bifold doors now in a completely different light. They might be a status symbol, but I’d advise caution to anyone thinking of installing a set in their home.

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I’ll keep mine as it’s too expensive to replace them, but they’re no longer my beautiful window to the world.

Instead, I keep one eye firmly on them when I’m in the kitchen. After all, these would-be assassins did try to kill me.