Jonathan Guildford
A quick motorbike ride before a family dinner could have been Michael “Hooky” Walker’s last.
It was supposed to be a 20-minute journey on his cherished Harley-Davidson.
But the 47-year-old’s next memory after the October 24 crash was waking up from a month-long coma with more than 50 fractures scattered throughout his body.
Walker was about 6km from his Lake Coleridge Village home in rural mid-Canterbury when he took evasive action to avoid lambs partially blocking the road.
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He was thrown from the bike and slammed into a bank, and was found soon after by a passer-by.
Alarm bells rang throughout the small township, and it was not long before the local fire service and Walker’s wife, Jo Walker, made it to the crash site.
At first glance, she believed her husband was dead.
“He did not look in a good way. If I hadn't heard him breathing, I [would have] thought he was already gone ... I didn't think there was any hope.”
Jo Walker insisted the Westpac Rescue helicopter be called as she doubted he would survive the 90-minute ambulance ride to Christchurch Hospital.
“If Jo hadn't actually insisted on one of our friends calling the air ambulance then I wouldn't be here. They saved my life,” Hooky Walker said.
His injuries were extensive.
There were significant brain bleeds, while the right side of his scapula was fractured like a “jigsaw puzzle”.
His left femur was also “smashed to pieces”, and he suffered a broken shoulder, about 10 fractures in his back, broken ribs and a collapsed lung.
Walker then spent about a month in a coma while undergoing several serious surgeries. He twice suffered from sepsis, a potentially life-threatening condition that occurs when the body responds to an infection by damaging its own tissues.
“They (doctors) told Jo to go get family because they didn't expect me to make it. Every few days I was living hour to hour,” he said.
Yet Walker defied the odds and woke from the coma.
His first memory was of seeing his father and sister, who had travelled from the North Island.
“I didn't know who they were because my brain was still bleeding.
“When I saw my father he just teared up. I couldn’t talk, but I gave him the old universal eyebrow [raise] and then he started crying again.”
He drifted in and out of sedation over the following days. When he came to, he had forgotten he was married, had children and even where he lived. The memories started coming back after about two weeks.
Walker said despite the traumatic injuries, the worst thing about the experience was the terrifying dreams he had while in the coma.
“They were absolutely horrific. I constantly felt like I was running away from people who wanted to have a piece of me.”
While he was extremely thankful for the support his family, friends and the wider community had shown him, he still felt terrible he had put them through the ordeal.
Jo Walker, who spent every day at Hooky’s bedside, said she was “grateful” to still have her husband and could not express just how much the support had meant to her.
Walker was discharged four days before Christmas and is now undertaking hours of rehabilitation work each day at home.
He remains determined to live the active lifestyle he led prior to the crash.
“Now it's about trying to understand what normal looks like and adjusting my life to that.”
Walker is an engineer at the Trustpower Lake Coleridge power station and served in the Royal New Zealand Navy. He was made a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 1996.
The couple volunteer for the Soldiers Sailors Airmen’s Association of New Zealand, which helps current and former Defence Force personnel deal with post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health issues.
A keen hunter, fisherman and tramper, Walker plans to continue doing all his favourite hobbies – including getting back on his Harley-Davidson.
“I've been kicked off the horse, so I have to get back on it. It's not in my nature to fold, but I'm really sensitive to what Jo would think if I rode out the gate again.
“There's no talk of taking a backwards step, it's all moving forward.”
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