St Austell woman's 'bad headache' after Disney theme park ride turned out to be far more serious

A grandmother has been told she was "very lucky" after what she thought was a bad headache turned out to be a serious injury caused by a theme park ride. Loraine Hoar was told by her local pharmacy in St Austell to go straight to the hospital when she showed up for painkillers.

It turned out the pain was due to a torn artery in her head received when she twisted it on the Yeti rollercoaster ride at Walt Disney World in Florida. She had gone there to celebrate her grandson Noah's 10th birthday.

Loraine thanked the staff at the pharmacy based in Asda after they potentially saved her life. She said: "The neurologist said I was so lucky and called me the luckiest person in the hospital. I can't thank Kelly and Luliana enough for their advice; it was absolutely the right thing to do."

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"I spent a week in Treliske Hospital and I'm going back for a scan in six months and hopefully it will have healed itself. I believe that if I hadn't received that advice I would have had a stroke." The 54-year-old, who is a keen marathon runner, added: "I thought I'd just cricked my neck at first on the rollercoaster, but the pain just kept getting worse and worse and continued when we got back to England.

"We needed some bits and pieces of food shopping so while we were in Asda I thought I'd get some strong painkillers such as co-codamol from the pharmacy while my husband, Nige, got the shopping. I asked Kelly at the pharmacy and she asked a few questions and dug deeper about why I wanted them and then she said 'can you just hang on a minute'.

"I was just thinking 'just give me the tablets please' as my headache was bad and I wanted to go out running as I was in training. She went and spoke to the pharmacist but came back and said 'unfortunately, we're not selling you these because we think you should go to A&E now.'

"I was shocked and I met my husband in the queue and said 'you're going to have to take me to hospital, because they've told me to go.' The doctors found that I had torn an artery and I could have had a stroke. I was put on medication and now I'm feeling so much better."

Luliana said: "Loraine came and asked Kelly for co-codamol for a bad headache and described that the pain was going down the back of her head and said that she felt dizzy. She explained that she did it on the rollercoaster.

"Because co-codamol can cause drowsiness, Kelly came to me for advice and told me what had happened. I was really concerned about her feeling dizzy and was worried that she may have had a concussion and felt that she should go to A&E and get checked out.

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"I'm proud of Kelly for getting all the information so we could make the decision that we did. Something didn't feel right. I'm so glad she took our advice and trusted us. She came to us at the right time. It's so important that colleagues are trained to ask the right questions.

Asda customer trading manager Sherran Bracey said the whole store was proud of Luliana and Kelly: "Luliana is definitely a five-star pharmacist. The pharmacy team work extremely hard, embracing change at every level to deliver for our customers. Well done team pharmacy."