I fly, straight to Royal Melbourne Hospital to have a spontaneous encounter with some of the best surgeons in the world. Meanwhile, back at the site, everything was surreal. The nightmare quickly became reality for everyone involved. Before the police did their report, they gave my mother a call, informing her that her son had been involved in a motorbike accident and that he was in a coma being flown to the hospital. This is the call that no one wants to get, especially not the world’s most caring mum. Her kids are everything to her and this just added to the cobweb of horror-movie scenes that happened that day.
Mum, otherwise known as Debra, rang my brother-in-law, Cliff, in a panic. She rang him because there was no way she could keep it together long enough to speak with my sister, Nicole. The best chance she had was to talk to anyone other than her own blood. She knew that talking to Nicole would open the waterworks for both of them. To tell her oldest child that her youngest son was fighting for his life would have been too much.
Nicole and Cliff raced over to Mum’s house to find out what was wrong, and then they took Mum straight to the hospital. This was on a sunny Saturday afternoon and my brother, Brett, and father, Vic, were out playing golf. I would sometimes go with them, but not that day.
On the way to the hospital my sister rang Brett to tell him the news. My brother and my dad raced off the golf course mid-round and they too went to the hospital. The Intensive Care Unit, to be more specific. At this point, the family did not know what to think as they didn’t know what state I was in at the time. All they were told was to go to the hospital as soon as possible. When they arrived, the first question they asked was, ‘Is he alive?’
‘Yes,’ was the perfect response they received. Like a great partnership, we arrived at the hospital at the same time. I had just been flown in and they wheeled me off the heli-pad, straight in to see the professionals. This was, of course, in plain view, giving my family their first, and possibly last, glimpse of me alive. Everyone knew I was in a serious way but no one was prepared to see me like that. ‘Unrecognisable’ is the only way they can describe it when they tell me about it now.
Mixed emotions were flying around in that moment. The consensus was that my chances of survival were pretty slim.
The family were put into a private room. They knew that a private room meant business. Things were not looking so good. While they were waiting, the doctors were doing all the tests necessary to establish a good report for them of this bad situation. Bleeding from my skull and bleeding on my brain were the biggest threats because until both stabilised the outcome would not be known. The most knowledgeable and skilled people in the medical profession could not give my family the answers they were so desperately longing for, because they simply didn’t know.
This left my family with so many unanswered questions lingering in the corridors of hell. The likelihood of my brother’s best man not even lasting the night was a hard reality to cope with.
What they did know was that my face was hanging off my skull because it had been severely damaged. Damaged to the point that my own mother couldn’t even picture that cheeky grin she’d become accustomed to for the past twenty-three years. Her initial thoughts when I was wheeled in from the heli-pad were, OH. MY. GOD... that guy looks horrific... I hope Scott’s looking better than that. I think that says it all, really. I’m just glad I wasn’t there to witness my family having to deal with the pain that hit them at that time.
A face reconstruction was required to piece my face back together. The orthopaedic surgeon would have to insert ten titanium plates onto my skull. They also knew that I had severe ligament damage at the base of my neck, but my spinal cord was OK. As stupid as this sounds, I’m grateful that I was hit as hard as I was because that stopped me from standing up and risking further damage. The movement of a millimetre may have been enough to leave me a quadriplegic. From the moment of impact until this point, my neck had not moved. This reduced the chance of any further spinal cord damage to less than 1 per cent.
Back at the property another group of mates from school had arrived to find everyone in a state of disbelief. As the night went on, the reality of what had happened that day sank further and further in.
The first obstacle my family faced was spreading the word. How were they going to hold it together well enough to tell family and friends? While fighting back tears, Mum made phone call after phone call no mother would want to make. With our family and friends scattered all the way up the east coast of Australia, it was her job to spread the word on the ground. The initial calls were like a nightmare and every one produced a sickening feeling of anxiety that struck Mum from head to toe. But she knew that, as a mother, it was up to her to make sure our closest tribe members – that is, our family and friends – were up to speed. This she did, all the time – she didn’t stop. With every minor change in my state, Mum would make more calls, keeping everyone informed. ‘Scott moved his index finger today’; ‘Scott’s brain stopped swelling’; or ‘It swelled again, but now it’s slowly reducing.’ These were insignificant changes to the outside world, but in Mum’s mind they were the difference between, ‘Scott may walk out of here one day’ and ‘Scott may be wheeled out of here in a body bag.’ I can feel a lump in the back of my throat even as I write this; I can’t begin to imagine how she did it.
While Mum was crying down the phone, Dad was crying over the keyboard. My father set up a group email to inform friends and family of what had happened and of my progress. Although not everyone was
able to visit me in hospital, there were many people around the world who really cared about my wellbeing.
Monday, 17 November 2008
Hi guys,
I’m not sure who has and who hasn’t been informed of our Scott’s motorbike accident. Saturday afternoon he was airlifted to Royal Melbourne Hospital and he was put into an induced coma. His face is a mess and will need rebuilding and as a consequence he needs a tube to allow breathing until his face is repaired. They think his neck and back are ok, but we do not know what injury there is to the brain until he wakes and can respond accordingly. He is stable and the pressure inside his head is normal for now. There is bruising and shearing on the brain but to what extent, we don’t know.
He has twice been scheduled for surgery to repair his face but cancelled due to other helicopter trauma arrivals. Tonight he was slightly less sedated and he responded by moving his arm. They cannot fully bring him out because he tries to remove the breathing tube. I guess that’s a good sign in itself. We are putting together an email group list and will provide updates when news is available. Feel free to call, but as you would realise, mobiles are off in the ICU, so we don’t get them sometimes until later on.
Regards,
Harris family
Once Dad started writing, we would get the occasional response, but the truth was that a lot of people did not know what to say and didn’t want to say the wrong thing. From my point of view, that’s totally understandable because it is only the very unlucky people in this world that have to deal with such things, and not everyone is equipped with the skills to handle tragic or terrible events.
The following day I went in for surgery. Being in surgery for the day gave Vic time for some email therapy. Not only was it a help to everyone on the outside, it was also a massive help to the man weeping on the inside.
Hi all,
Scott went to surgery at 12.30 today to repair his broken face. On his return later today to
