People are amazed I’m back on my pitch within five months. I saw one of the people who were looking after me in the critical care unit, and he said he couldn’t believe I was back there after what I’d been through.
I remember some bits of the accident – I recall getting off the bus, walking up behind it, looking left and seeing the traffic really off in the distance. I thought, ‘I’ve got enough time to cross the road all the way’. I took two or three steps off the kerb, looked left and then I heard the noise. There’s a pair of headlights there and I thought, ‘Shit, this is gonna happen’. I remember the car hitting me and then going up in the air, but I don’t remember landing. When I came round there’s people saying, ‘Stay still, stay still’ and someone was holding my head and my neck – there were quite a few folk around me.
I opened my eyes, and all I could see was red because they were pooled with blood, so I wiped it away. I was saying, ‘Leave me alone, I want to go home’. I was trying to get up but I couldn’t. My flatmate came round ’cos my neighbour’s daughter got off the bus and said I was there, and that it had been me in the accident. He had heard the crash. I passed him my phone and my wallet for some reason, and he said he’d phone my mum. I said, ‘No, leave it, I’ll phone her later or in the morning – I better go in the ambulance and get checked out’. I didn’t realise how bad I was.
I remember getting put into the ambulance and the man said, ‘We’ll cut your coat off’. I said, ‘No, you won’t, it was a present from a customer’. I unzipped this really big, baggy coat and my arm sort of fell out of the sleeve as much as I took it out – which made them think I wasn’t as bad as I was. I don’t remember much else about getting to hospital, except them putting the oxygen hood on me and I was trying to fight them and rip it off, arguing with them.
I got an epidural that didn’t work, then I got one that did, and the next day they injected me with ketamine. That was the strangest thing, I had instant pure hallucinations. It was like a horror film with 3D effects. I suffered a fractured spine, sternum, pelvis, broken shoulder, hip, ankle, nine ribs, had two missing teeth, and had to have an emergency bowel operation so I’ve got a stoma bag fitted. I won’t know for about a year or 18 months if that’s going to be permanent.
I saw God too – he told me to piss off back to my pitch
I had a heart attack during the op, and one afterwards too. I had kidney failure so I was on dialysis for a while, I had pneumonia off the ventilator during the coma, and I also had sepsis. They were picking bits of glass and gravel out my forehead. I saw God too, when I was having one of my heart attacks – he told me to piss off back to my pitch at Snow Hill! He was just like the pictures you see of him – grey beard, long hair and a robe. I haven’t seen him since though!
