Love Island is about to return to our screens, bringing with it a new bunch of tanned, attractive, and immaculately groomed contestants who’ll spend weeks lying around in their swimwear looking for love. The latest batch has already raised eyebrows due to some apparently unpleasant social media history, though one familiar face from the past has just revealed a shocking real-life incident that very near killed her.
Contestant Ellie Spence was an Islander on Season 9, lasting 24 days before being dumped by the public. On Instagram, she outlined a truly horrific-sounding incident that took place just before she turned 18. Spence said:
I’d just finished my A level exams and me and one of my best friends Livvy went out on a night out, we got back to her house in the early hours of the morning and the gate in front of her house was locked. After climbing the gate and reaching the top, I put my foot on the bar in-between the spears, my foot slipped and one of the spears impaled me directly in the joint of my leg. I somehow spun around and found myself hanging backwards off the gate, 10ft in the air.
That’s… not a good situation to be in. Fortunately, adrenaline kicked in, she regained consciousness and her friend helped her off the spike. Doctors later revealed that if she’d fallen just 3mm to the side she’d have nicked her artery and likely died:
“After 10 minutes of miscommunicating with each other in complete darkness, my leg had torn from the very front of my joint to the back of my bum. I started to pass out from the pain, loss of blood and mentally coming to terms with the fact I just knew I was about to die. I gave up and hung in silence and after a few minutes I suddenly heard a voice screaming in my ear to get up, get up, get up repeatedly.
…
I was rushed to hospital and told I was 3mm away from my main artery so just one more tiny tear I would have bled out and died hanging on the gate. Livvy is my real life angel and she saved my life that day. Coming to terms with very narrowly escaping death is a feeling I’ll never truly be able to put into words and the long recovery that followed really really made me appreciate how lucky I am to be given a second chance at experiencing life.”
The damage still remains, with Spence saying “the scar is always going to be there”, but understandably and straightforwardly says that she’s just happy she’s still able to walk and is thankful to be alive at all.
There are two morals to this story. The first is, as Spence underlines, that you shouldn’t “let your body hold you back from enjoying not just summer but the rest of your life”. Fair enough, but another important lesson is to stay the heck away from spike-topped gates and railings when you’re drunk.
Love Island season 10 commences on ITV2 on June 5. Check out our full rundown of every new contestant here.
Published: May 31, 2023 05:06 am