Hubby with half a head!
After a brutal attack, Eddie was left with half a head
Friday 10th October 2008
With bated breath, I watched as the doctors unwrapped the bandages from my husband Eddie's head.
'You're under there somewhere then,' I joked.
But as the doctor pulled the final strip of gauze away, I gasped.
Yes, Eddie, 37, was still under there. Just not all of him.
'What is it?' Eddie frowned, seeing the look of horror on my face.
'Err…' I mumbled, stalling for time.
I mean, how do you tell your husband half his head is missing?
'It's not forever,' the doctor said. 'We can insert a titanium plate in your head to make it round again.'
What a relief! But we'd come frighteningly close to losing more than just a chunk of skull.
Two months earlier, in January this year, Eddie and I had been on our way home from Shirebrook Working Men's Club with a Chinese takeaway, when he and his friend, Vic Steer, 35, had stopped to light some ciggies.
'I'll be home soon,' Eddie said, as I carried on walking. But 15 minutes later, he still wasn't back. His chow mein will be cold, I thought, dialling his number.
I got no answer from Eddie's phone, but Vic picked up his straight away.
'We've been attacked,' he gasped.
Attacked? They were only up the road. I raced out the front door and headed towards a crowd who'd gathered up the street.
'Eddie!' I cried.
He was lying face-down in the road, blood staining his blond hair red, and breathing in shallow grunts.
My hands shook as I dialled 999.
'Who did this?' I asked Vic.
'Someone came up behind us and hit us both over the head,' he said.
Vic had a golf ball-sized lump, but it was Eddie we were worried about. He was still unconscious when the ambulance arrived. I got into the back with Eddie, a policeman and
a paramedic.
'We're going to hospital,' I told Eddie, hoping he could hear as we raced through the streets. Then…
'He's not breathing,' the paramedic cried, leaping up and trying to resuscitate him.
'Eddie!' I screamed.
We'd only been married six years. I can't lose him.
Thank goodness the paramedic got him breathing again. I met my parents, Stuart
and Susan Howson, at the Chesterfield Royal Hospital. But within minutes, Eddie had
to be transferred to the Royal Hallamshire Hospital, in Sheffield, for major brain surgery.
'Eddie's bleeding from the brain,' a doctor explained.
Once in Sheffield, we could only wait, sick with fear, knowing Eddie's head was being sliced open.
After six hours, a surgeon came to talk to us.
'I have two pieces of bad news,' he said. 'If Eddie wakes up, he'll certainly be brain-damaged.'
Mum squeezed my hand, as the doctor continued.
'The likelihood is he'll die within the next three hours.'
'No,' I croaked.
I was taken to see Eddie. But the bloody, swollen figure, with his head wrapped in bandages, wasn't the man I knew.
'It's not him,' I said tearfully.
But deep down, I knew it was.
'Eddie,' I sobbed. 'Don't leave me.'
As we went to a sideroom to wait, the clock on the wall seemed to grow in size, every tick a reminder that my time with Eddie was running out.
'We've arrested someone,' a police officer told me at one point.
That was no comfort to me now. Hours passed. My eyes didn't move from the door, waiting for it to open with: 'I'm sorry, Mrs Fletcher…'
But after six hours…
'He's holding his own,' a doctor said.
Come on Eddie. Keep fighting.And amazingly, he did.
He'd need to be kept in a coma for a week or so to let his brain recover, but he'd made it, against all the odds. I hadn't forgotten what the doctor had said, though. Brain damage.
The important thing is that he's alive, I told myself. But I was scared. A back injury meant I couldn't work, so Eddie's mechanic's job was our only income. And when he wasn't visiting his kids from his first marriage, Stacey, 14, Darren, 13, and Richard, 11, we loved spending our weekends zooming round in our matching Land Rovers. Would he be able to do any of that again? Would he even recognise me? And I still didn't know anything about the attack. Nothing was stolen, and Eddie didn't have any enemies.
A week on, doctors started to bring him out of his coma, and 10 days after the accident, he was awake.
'Eddie,' I beamed, walking into his room. 'You made it.'
He couldn't speak because of the tracheotomy tube in his neck helping him breathe, but Eddie slowly lifted his right arm and did a thumbs-up. He was back! After tests, we were told the extent of his brain damage.
'You've been paralysed down the left-hand side,' his doctor explained. 'You'll have to learn
to walk again.'
Once Eddie was transferred to the rehab ward, we were finally able to talk about the attack.
'The last thing I remember is lighting my cigarette,' he slurred. 'Then waking up here.'
It was so senseless, and we longed to get back to normal. But it wasn't easy, especially when doctors removed Eddie's bandages to reveal his slanted head.
'We cut away part of your skull to repair your brain,' the surgeon said.
'I've got more things to worry about than looking weird,' Eddie replied.
Like walking.
He started with a Zimmer frame.
'It's too hard,' he said, heaving himself along clumsily.
But he kept at it. A month on, he was using crutches.
Then, one day in April 2008, I arrived at the hospital and saw a tall man in the corridor.
Then I saw his flat head…It was Eddie, with no crutches!
'I've done it, love,' he beamed.
Four months after the attack, Eddie and I left the hospital hand in hand. In August 2008, Ashley Crossland, 22, admitted GBH at Derby Crown Court. He still didn't give a reason.
He was sentenced to 14 months.
'No time at all,' Eddie fumed.
It makes me shudder to think of that coward walking past us in the street. Not that we'd know. He jumped Eddie from behind and there's never been a picture of him in the papers.
'He's got off scot-free,' Eddie said.
The attack has left him with permanently slurred speech, plus he's snappier and more forgetful. And with both of us on benefits, we've had to sell the Land Rovers.
Hopefully by the time you read this, Eddie will have had the operation to make him look normal again. I just hope, some day, our lives can be normal again, too.