Skull in freezer!
Her skull was preserved in the freezer!
Sunday 27th July 2008
It looked more like a pumpkin than a human head. The face was swollen to three times its normal size, the ears and mouth were barely visible, and the eyes were black as coal. But as I gazed down at the body lying in the hospital bed, my heart missed a beat.
'It's her,' I gasped, grabbing my husband Tony's hand for support. 'It's our April.'
Tony, 66, and I stared in complete and utter disbelief. How on earth had our 19-year-old daughter turned into this? It was 30 November 2003, and at 6pm that evening, we'd had a phone call from April's friend, Cara Hann, then 19.
'There's been an accident,' Cara had babbled. 'The car came off the road and rolled over. April's hurt.'
As Tony and I had raced to The Alfred Hospital, in Melbourne, Australia, we'd no idea exactly what had happened or how badly injured she was.But as soon as I'd seen the look on the doctor's face, I'd known it was bad.
'I'm afraid April needs surgery immediately,' he'd said. 'She's seriously injured.'
'OK,' I'd nodded, struggling to take it all in.
'The car she was a passenger in rolled onto its roof,' the doctor had explained. 'April was slammed into a tree stump, punching a hole into her skull the size of a fist.'
A hole in her head? It didn't bear thinking about.
As April was rushed into surgery, we waited, hoping and praying she'd pull through.
Cara and their other friends, Ben Kope, 20, and Madeline Read, 19, who'd been in the car, had all escaped with less severe injuries and had been brought to hospital, too. I'd phoned April's dad, Arthur Spearing, 52, and her gran, Marcia Spearing, and four agonising hours later, when she was wheeled out of the theatre and into intensive care, they were there waiting.
The four of us went straight to her bedside and now, as I stared at the person in front of me, every instinct in my body was telling me this couldn't be my daughter. Where was the young woman I'd waved off, dressed in her hoody and jeans, as she left for a weekend away at Lomandra Park activity centre with her mates? Where was my tall, beautiful daughter with her long, dark, wavy hair and hazel eyes? Her head was covered in bandages. In the middle of her forehead someone had written a message in marker pen on some paper, stuck on the bandages. NO BONE.
'What on earth…?' I gasped.
'What does it mean, “no bone”?'
The surgeon stepped closer to April's bed and pointed to her head.
'The head's made up of more than 27 bones that are held together like a jigsaw,' he explained. 'When the car rolled over, April's head burst apart and her forehead broke in half and split away completely.'
My stomach lurched.
'To give her the best chance, we had to peel away the bone, ' he continued. 'A bit like peeling the shell from a hard-boiled egg, to give her brain room to swell.'
I could hardly believe what I was hearing.
'So you mean you've taken a piece of her head away?' I gulped.
He nodded.
'Just temporarily, though,' he said. 'We'll store it at minus 70°C in a special fridge until April's well enough to have it replaced.'
To be honest, I didn't know what was more difficult to take in. The fact they had removed part of my daughter's skull, or the fact they were putting it in the fridge. But as we stared at April's body, hooked up to tubes, with machines beeping all around her, that was the least of our worries. As well as the head injuries, she'd fractured her back and blood was seeping from her ears and nose. Seeing her in such a state broke my heart, but I knew I had to stay positive, for her if no one else. So I took a deep breath and wiped away my tears.
'You'll be out of here soon,' I whispered, sitting next to her bed. 'We'll get through this.'
Truth was, I didn't even know if she could hear me.
Over the next week, I sat by her bed, watching her chest rise and fall, as the life-support machine pumped air into her lungs. I talked to her, showed her pictures of her friends, of her smiling at her end-of-school ball, and in a Star Trek costume on a night out. But still, there was nothing to indicate she could even hear me. It felt so hopeless. And four days after the accident, I realised I wasn't the only one who thought so, when the doctor took us to one side.
'There's no hope,' he said softly. 'It's time to start thinking about switching off life support.'
I was too upset to even speak.
It was a whole two days before I could even talk to Tony about donating April's organs.
'It's what she would have wanted,' I said, trying to reassure myself.
That night, we popped home to get some rest. When we went back to the hospital at 9am on the Sunday morning, I was ready to prepare myself for the worst. But when we got to the ward, April's nurse greeted us with a grin.
'What's happened?' I gasped, feeling slightly confused.
'April squeezed my hand,' she said. 'She's responding to things we ask her.'
'I don't believe it,' I gasped. 'We were told there was no hope.'
'It's a miracle,' the nurse smiled.
If I hadn't believed in miracles before, I certainly did now. With tears of happiness streaming down my face, I raced over to April's bed and grabbed her hand.
'Can you hear me, love?' I cried.
Then I felt it. A tiny squeeze. It was the best moment of my life. But April wasn't out of the woods yet. Not by a long way. Over the next few months, her weight plummeted from a healthy 9st 5lb to a tiny 5st, and she still hadn't opened her eyes.
Worst of all, part of her head was still in the fridge!
Over the weeks that followed, April's eyes gradually flickered open, but she still couldn't speak because of the tube in her throat. And it wasn't until three months later, in February 2004, that I sat and watched as doctors finally unravelled the bandages. I swallowed hard. There was a long scar running across her forehead from the top of one ear to the other, and her brow was strangely flat where the bone was missing. April didn't see her own head until she was moved to Ivanhoe Private Rehabilitation Hospital, a month later.
When she saw her reflection, she was as shocked as I'd been.
I look horrible, she wrote on the whiteboard she'd been using to communicate.
Tears filled my eyes.
'You look beautiful,' I gulped.
'One day, you'll have your head back together again. The doctors
are keeping it in the fridge until you're well enough, remember?'
Her memory was still patchy.
At last, April's tracheotomy tube was removed and she spoke to me for the first time in six months.
'Hello, Mummy,' she croaked.
'Hello, love,' I said, before breaking down in tears of relief.
My April was back.
Soon, she was up on her feet and walking short distances. Then, eight months after the accident, April's surgeon gave us the news we'd been waiting for.
'We're going to give you your forehead back,' he smiled. 'The missing piece of bone is in three pieces, so we'll cement it together, then reinsert it into your head.'
It sounded horrific. But the alternative was even worse. April couldn't go around with a chunk of her head missing forever.
She was so excited as she was taken down to theatre for the four-hour operation, but when she was wheeled out, she looked terrible. Her eyes were swollen and the skin on her forehead was held together by metal pins. But when she saw herself in the mirror, she was so brave.
'It's looking pretty good,' she said. 'I'm finally back together again.'
And it's true, she was. Just like a human jigsaw.
There was still a bump on her forehead, but April had a fringe cut to hide it, and when she came home in November 2004, a year after the accident, she looked like any other 20-year-old girl. She's developed epilepsy since the accident and sometimes acts unpredictably, but it doesn't stop her enjoying her life. She's doing a course in animal behaviour so she can get a job working with animals. The main thing is she's here, and so is her head. And it's all thanks to those wonderful surgeons who stored her skull in the fridge!