Commuter run over by two Tube trains pays for prosthetic leg after NHS delays
A commuter who was run over by two Tube trains decided to pay £17,000 for a prosthetic leg to avoid NHS waits.
Sarah de Lagarde, from Camden in north London, was travelling home from work when she lost her footing and fell down the gap between the train and the platform edge in September 2022.
The 45-year-old ended up having her arm and her leg amputated after the incident, after being hit by two trains while she lay injured on the tracks at High Barnet Underground station.
Mrs de Lagarde earlier this year became the first person in the world to have a bionic arm equipped with AI technology, after a crowdfunding appeal set up by her husband Jeremy exceeded its target of £250,000.
Having also lost her right leg below the knee in the accident, she said she initially used a prosthetic leg provided by the NHS, but it didn’t fit correctly as her upper leg had changed shape in the six weeks she had to wait to receive it.
She told The Times in an interview: “It activated my sciatic nerve. I was on the floor screaming. At one point I blacked out and fell on the floor from the pain.”
The NHS offered to recast the leg, she said, but told her it would take another six weeks, so she decided to go private.
“I thought, I can’t spend another six weeks in bed or a wheelchair,” she said, adding: “It cost £17,000 but it meant I could walk again.”
‘I find myself horrific’
Mrs de Lagarde, who has now returned to work part-time in her job as global head of communications for asset management firm Janus Henderson, revealed she can’t walk upstairs with the prosthetic, and her husband has to carry her to their bedroom which is on the second floor of their home.
She describes her husband as her “bedrock”, adding: “He looks at me and still he sees me as a whole person.
“I look at myself and I find myself horrific. It’s such a horrible word, but the stumps – they look awful. And yet he looks at me and he loves me. I draw from that.”
Mrs de Lagarde previously said it took 15 minutes for other commuters to notice she had fallen onto the tracks, and another hour before rescue services were able to reach her, while doctors told her she nearly died 10 times on the night of the accident.
She believes many “avoidable mistakes” by Transport for London were to blame for the tragedy, and is now campaigning for doors to be installed on platforms.
“Why was there a gap so big that a grown woman could fall down? Why did nobody see me crawling around on the tracks on the CCTV?,” she said in the newspaper interview.
PTSD now prevents her from travelling on the Tube, and she said the thought of her own children taking public transport by themselves makes her “sick to my stomach”.
