24 Hours in A&E: Season 12, Episode 8

12 - 8: In Sickness and in Health

The RTS award-winning documentary series follows patients treated in the same 24-hour period at St George's in south west London: a place where stories of life, love and loss unfold every day. This episode focuses on the bond between married couples in the face of testing circumstances. Corey, who's 27, is rushed to St George's after suffering a cardiac arrest during a game of ice hockey. His wife of seven days, Alice, was watching him play when he collapsed. As Corey arrives in Resus, the medical team learn that his brain has been deprived of oxygen for over 25 minutes and doctors put him in an induced coma to prevent further damage to his brain and major organs. Nurse Liz talks about the difficulty in predicting the long term outcome of cases like Corey's: 'until the patient has woken up, you've got no idea how this has affected them, how badly brain damaged they've got, how they are going to function.' John, who's 55, fell 10 feet while taking down scaffolding at home.