The daughter of swimming legend Dawn Fraser has revealed just how close the Olympic great came to death after a fall on an unfinished driveway and desperate phone call to a neighbour that resulted in emergency surgery and four broken ribs.
Moments before Fraser was taken in for emergency hip surgery last week, close family were told there was a good chance she might not survive the fall at her daughter’s house on the Sunshine Coast.
Fraser turned to her daughter, Dawn-Lorraine, and looked her in the eye.
Dawn Fraser at the Sport Australia Hall of Fame Gala Dinner last month.Credit: Getty Images
“The last thing Mum said to me was, ‘I’m going to fight’,” Dawn-Lorraine Fraser told this masthead.
“I said, ‘You make sure you fight.’
“Then when she came out of intensive care, she looked at us and said, ‘See, I told you I’d fight.’
“The scariest moment was when the anaesthetist just said to me ‘she probably won’t survive this’.
“They don’t know my mother and they don’t know how much of a fighter she is.
“You don’t want to know what I said back. I basically said, ‘Whatever happens, you will resuscitate her. You will keep her alive.’”
Fraser, 87, is still recovering in hospital on the Sunshine Coast.
She has been watching Australia’s swimmers compete on television at the world shortcourse championships in Budapest.
“She’s getting there. We haven’t been in this morning. She’s doing OK,” her daughter said.
“She never carries her phone, but she had it in her pocket and rung our neighbour to say, ‘Could you come over, please. I’ve had a fall.’
“[Well-wishes] have just been amazing. I’ve cried and I’ve laughed. I’ve just been amazed at how many people have tried to make contact.”
Story to come