Candace Emptage tells of her shock after waking from six-week coma and being told she is no longer in the 1990s
A mother who was in a coma for six weeks woke up thinking she was living in the 1990s and that Princess Diana was still alive.
Candace Emptage also forgot she had a daughter after the horror smash left her battling for life four years ago.
Ms Emptage also revealed how she was moments from death after her family discussed turning off her life support machine - only to see their loved one move a finger just in time.
The former model suffered horrific injuries and was in a coma for more than a month after she lost control of her Toyota MR2 and crashed into the path of an ambulance near Rowlands Gill, Gateshead in September 2010.
However, despite her physical recovery, the mother-of-one couldn't believe that it was no longer the 90’s.
Candace, 40, of County Durham, said: "Shock doesn't even come close to what I felt. They told me I had a daughter and I just stared at them and said, 'what?’
"Eventually one image of Maddie, who was 14 at the time, came back to me, but she was a tiny little girl of about two.
"When she came to the hospital I had no idea who she was, I just couldn’t believe I had a teenage daughter.
"I still have no memories of her before the crash, and it has been hard.”
Candace had also totally forgotten she had a boyfriend, who she split up with soon after the accident.
She had been with Terry for six years and he had come to see her every day while she'd been in the hospital.
But the relationship deteriorated when Candace returned home.
She added: "I thought I was about 22, I still cannot remember my childhood, going to school or my oldest friends.”
Now Candace has met the men and women of Swalwell Community Fire Station, Gateshead, who spent over an hour cutting her free from the wreckage and saving her life four years ago.
She said: “I wanted to meet the firefighters who came to my rescue that night. I wanted to say a huge thank you, I owe them my life.
“I can’t remember anything about the crash and I need to know what happened. It has been a huge comfort to know that I wasn't alone that night.
"It was surreal that when I walked into the room to meet the three firefighters I recognised them.
"Then I was told that they were the three that were with me when I was being cut out, they had comforted me and spoke to me even though they couldn’t understand what I was saying.
"This whole time I believed I had been alone that night without any real human contact but it all came flooding back to me when I saw their faces.”
Watch manager Mark Westgarth, the Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service officer in charge at the incident, said: “We vividly remember this crash.
“As we removed the roof of the car to gain access to Candace, crew members sat inside and talked to her throughout the rescue.
“She was losing a lot of blood and her lower leg was trapped by the buckled metal caused by the impact to the front end of the car.”
Candace is now back at home with daughter Maddy and says they have a good relationship, despite the fact she has no memories of her growing up.
She has undergone months of intensive physiotherapy and speech therapy and still has no feeling down the right hand side of her body, but has now began driving again.
Candace says she is happy to be alive, and thinks that somewhere deep down she must have known she had to pull through for her daughter.
