Yorkshire mum cheated death after falling from ladder and being impaled on eight inch metal rod

Sharon Stone, 51, was on a ladder stripping wallpaper when she lost her balance and plunged from the fifth rung approximately five feet to the ground.

She landed back-first on an upright metal rod that was part of a dismantled shoe rack - which punctured her skin and shot just centimetres passed her heart.

Mum-of-one Sharon said the pain was "agonising" and that she was pleading with her ex-husband, who was in the house, "please don’t let me die".

An ambulance scrambled to the property in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, but due to how far the rod had entered paramedics weren't able to remove it.

Sharon had to travel 45 minutes to Hull and then be transferred to another hospital before she finally underwent a two hour operation to remove it - seven hours after the fall.

Miraculously, Sharon was out of hospital within 48 hours with relatively minor injuries and she is expected to make a full recovery.

A gruesome x-ray shows her torso with the a long pole protruding through it.

Sharon said: "I feel very lucky indeed not to have been more hurt, I could definitely have died.

"When it happened I was in a bit of shock, I knew immediately that I had been imapled but I couldn't really believe it.

"The pain was agonising and I was just begging 'please don’t let me die'.

"Luckily I got on lots of morphine when the paramedics arrived so I don't remember a huge amount after that.

"But I know that I'm incredibly lucky, I feel very grateful."

Sharon, who works as a teacher, was decorating at home on the evening of November 4 when she lost balance and fell on the metal rod.

Her ex-husband, who was in the house, responded first and rang for an ambulance, which arrived a short time later.

Due to the narrow halls in Sharon's three-storey town house she couldn't be stretchered out so she had to walk to the emergency vehicle with the rod protruding from her.

She was rushed to Hull Royal Infirmary and assessed before being moved to Castle Hill Hospital in East Yorks., where she had an operation to remove the implement.

In total the rod remained in Sharon's body between 6pm on November 4 and around 1am the next day.

Doctors say it plunged eight inches into her body and missed her heart by two inches.

Sharon said: “I’m very grateful that it didn’t go through any of my major organs.

"This could have been much worse."

She fractured a rib in the fall and has a bandaged wound where the rod entered her back, which she says is causing some difficulty.

However, overall she is "pretty well", she said, adding: "I'm never going up a ladder again