David Prentice, 52, who suffered brain damage at birth, had a varicose vein burst near his right ankle at his West Albury group home on December 9.

Support worker Paul McClear, in the job two months after having been a qualified chef, was called by a fellow employee after Mr Prentice had emerged from his bedroom haemorrhaging.

"I looked down at his foot and it was spurting blood out of it, it was looking gory," Mr McClear said.

A towel applied to the leg was soon saturated and after getting a female ambulance phone operator on the line, Mr McClear was faced with a dire situation.

"He just stopped breathing and I said 'he's gone, he's not here' and she said 'don't panic, we're going to start CPR'," he said.

"So I grabbed him out of the chair, where he was slumped and started CPR.

"I would have been doing that for 10 to 15 minutes, it seemed like forever and he wasn't responding.

"Every now and again he would take a gasp of air, which was encouraging because I thought he was dead."

Paramedics then transported Mr Prentice, who has limited verbal skills, to Albury hospital.

Mum Denise Prentice arrived at the house to see her comatose son being worked on by four paramedics.

"I just thought he was gone," she said.

It was the third eruption of a varicose vein in three months, but this occasion he was admitted to hospital and lost four litres of blood with his blood pressure 50 over 35 (the ideal is 120 over 80).

"I said to the doctor 'do you think David's going to die?' and she said 'it's on the cards, he's not well'," Mrs Prentice said.

Mr McClear visited Mr Prentice in hospital the day after his heroism.

"I was prepared to say my goodbyes and I was surprised to see him sitting up and wanting to talk about footy and having a can of Coke," Mr McClear said.

Mr Prentice spent a week in hospital with his mother and younger siblings Mark, Donna and Damian in a constant vigil next to his bed.

While still not 100 per cent and looking pale, Mr Prentice is returning to full health and is due to have an operation next month to remove a vein.

Underlining just how much blood her son lost, Mrs Prentice showed off stains on the carpet of his bedroom floor that could not be removed despite two bouts of cleaning.

She has no doubt she got to share Christmas lunch with her son yesterday because of Mr McClear.

"He's a hero, the paramedic said he saved David's life," Mrs Prentice said.

"It would have been a spur of the moment thing and he needs some recognition."

The gravity of what he had done hit Mr McClear later that night when he reflected with some beers.

"I'm really humbled," Mr McClear said during his interview with The Border Mail at the dining table at the group home.

"It was a great result - if it had gone the other way I would have been sitting down with a counsellor rather than you.

"It's great to know you've saved a life.

"It's really good to see him up and about, from where he was two weeks ago to now it's amazing."

Mr McClear said the ambulance crew told him the work he and other staff had done was "outstanding" and "that was reassuring".

Mrs Prentice, who lost her husband to lung cancer in 1991 and had her 75^th birthday while her son was in hospital, said it was wonderful to spend Christmas at her Wodonga home with her football obsessed oldest child.

With his thinking at the level of a young child, Mr Prentice still expresses delight that Father Christmas visits him.

"We'll always have Santa with David and he just loves it with all the presents," Mrs Prentice said.

"He likes lots and lots of parcels.

"If you're giving him pyjamas you wrap the bottom and top in separate parcels."