It happened at 3:30 in the afternoon. I was knackered and really looking forward to getting back to the luxury of our hotel and ordering some Room service and cuddling up with my new wife. Oh and having a jacuzzi! 

I was so tired. I remember thinking I hope we get back safely, I’m too exhausted for anything other than a quick ride home and a soak in the bath. 

But it wasn’t to be. They were the last few moments of my previous life, a previous personality and existence. That ride home changed everything forever. 

We drove out of the complex and finally onto the highway back to our hotel.  It was so hot and everyone else had got out at their hotels before is, we were the last stop, only me and Dani left. 

And the world turns…

I couldn’t help but have a flick through my medical notes just now (I won’t specify where I was when I had my accident for legal reasons). The most haunting 6 words to have ever read about myself – 

The patient is reported as grave. 

  

I had my first flashback for a long time recently when I was unwell. 

I was strapped down to the bed and burning up, my brain was so swollen. I was in so much pain I can’t describe it. It’s like having memories of being trapped in a body but you can’t speak. No one could hear or understand me, everyone was speaking in a foreign language, everyone stank, including me. The smell of dried blood will never leave me, the smells of my skin rotting on my head from the trauma and ringworm, the smells of body odour mixed with a hospital that was clearly in a third world country. I genuinely believe I survived hell. 

It was a reminder

That it really was worse than I ever explained. That’s because I can’t put the horror and torment into words. 

I just try my best for forget, but it’s not easy. It’s lonely having seen all that through my eyes but never being able to share it. 

The above notes  is the type of thing you read from a patient who is clearly not going to make it. 

A year after my accident I met one of the doctors who helped save my life in England, after I’d been air lifted back. She said that I was the sickest young person she had ever seen: Quite a compliment. 

Words in the reports keep coming up;

Major

Severe

Haemorrhages 

Bleeding

Subarachnoid 

Severe Cerebral oedema

Etc etc…

Cheers Juan! 

 

These people did a good job. My O2 saturation levels when I was admitted  half dead were 82%. By the time I left to go on to the next hospital (I took a tour) they were 99%, as they should be for all healthy humans. 

And Dani found out she was pregnant with Reese when I was going through all this and in my coma – imagine that. We didn’t even know! 

I can’t go into anymore detail, but when this is settled in court I will be able to. If it were a film, the advert would include mafia members trying to coerce my family and chasing them through the jungle. It would include four people going through hell, like no one could imagine. 

It is hard to explain the memories I have, it is too difficult to describe the horror so I didn’t bother. I just choose to push it away, in a healthy and controlled way.

The hell my family went through in keeping me as safe as they could will never be forgotten. Only they saw it, fought it and lived to tell the story. The funny thing is that although my life was nearly taken, their lives were equally in danger, just in different ways. I was resuscitated and lived through it, I remember every haunting second of it. But my parents and new wife went through watching my life slip away, come back, slip away etc. 

I’ll tell the story one day when it has been settled. But for now I better just leave it at that. 

3 years ago –   

3 days ago –   

Read the hat and you’ll realise it takes more than a dodgy motor, reckless driver, 3 corrupt hospitals, the mafioso, secretions as thick as tar blocking my airways, sepsis, haemorrhages and all the rest of it to get rid of me. Oh, and my family don’t fuck about, they are the Elite A team.