I’d just arrived, and had my mobile phone out to ring my registrar to ask whether I had time to nick up to the wards and see my patients, or whether I needed to go straight to the outpatient clinic.
At first I thought I’d been pushed in the back. Then I slipped on my own blood and fell to the floor. I was being stabbed, over and over again. I remember turning my head so a blow coming at my eye instead landed on my skull. Being a neurosurgeon, I could all too easily picture the blade piercing my brain through the eye socket.
I remember people yelling, and the tug on my clothing as I was dragged along the floor through a set of double doors to safety and along the corridors to Emergency, leaving a trail of blood.
The full story of my rescue and the incredible bravery and people behind it – including nurses, an intern, a hospital technician and a leukaemia patient – only emerged much later.
I remember looking at my arms and hands; there were deep cuts. I remember being aware that I was breathless, and trying to slow my breathing – not knowing I had a punctured lung.
I remember the look of absolute horror on my registrar’s face, as I was wheeled past him on a hospital trolley on my way to surgery.
I remember asking someone to call my wife.
I remember the pain of being prepped for surgery, the sting of antiseptics on open wounds, and asking the anaesthetist why they couldn’t put me to sleep first. (They didn’t tell me it was for fear that I would go into arrest, and they wanted to wait until the full medical team was assembled.)
Hazily, I remember waking with a tube in my throat and seeing my wife – then things fade out until I woke to the moment of truth.
I was lucky
It was 2am and I was alone, in a hospital bed. I knew where I was and what had happened. The big question, my big fear, was that I might have had a stroke as a result of the attack. I moved one side of my body, and then other. Both sides worked. It was then that I felt I would be okay in the end.
All up, I was stabbed 14 times. But I was lucky.
I was fortunate that instead of being bystanders, brave people intervened to get me away from my attacker.
The surgical team did an incredible job of stitching me back together, with a cardio-thoracic surgeon removing part of my lung to stem bleeding and three plastic surgeons mending severed tendons and muscles in my arms and hands.
I was also lucky to have a supportive family who helped me through the process of recovery.
My arms and hands were in splints for six weeks. I couldn’t eat without help, or get dressed. I couldn’t wipe my own backside – at times, I had my eight-year-old son helping me in the bathroom. If that’s not humbling, I don’t know what is.
Ironically, there was part of me that was pleased to have some time off from the constant pressure to work more and more hours in the resource-constrained public hospital system.
At the time of my recovery, MH370 went missing, and I watched hours and hours of coverage on TV.
When the splints came off, I was fortunate to have a hand therapist who worked with me over the next 12 months to enable me to regain strength and movement.
I was also lucky to be able recover fully and return to work.
And I’ve been lucky that I don’t seem to have been left psychologically scarred – other than disliking crowded areas in hospitals, and people walking behind me.