Amazing recovery of man cut by propeller
A YOUNG lifeboatman who was left in a coma after a boat’s propellers sliced through his skull has made an amazing recovery and is setting his sights on a return to work.
Doctors had told Alistair McLean’s family that even if he survived, he might never be able to walk or speak again after the accident which saw him crash head first into the blades at the back of his boat.
However, after less than two months of recovery, the 20-year-old has returned to his home in Kinghorn, Fife. Despite doctors’ fears he might not recognise his relatives and would need 24-hour care, he is able to chat with family and friends and is already anticipating a return to lifeboat rescue missions.
“I don’t remember what happened, but I know I am very lucky and very happy to be here,” he said yesterday. “It feels great to be back at home. I have a lot of hard work to do to get back to full strength, but I am going to put everything I have into it. It is my dream to return to the lifeboats.”
Mr McLean, a crewman for two years, had been on a training operation in the Firth of Forth with a volunteer lifeboat crew from RNLI Kinghorn on 16 July. He fell head first off the twin-engined Atlantic 75 class lifeboat and into the water.
The spinning blades smashed into his head, slicing straight through his helmet and shattering his skull. The crew hauled him out of the water and raced back to shore to meet a waiting ambulance.
Surgeons at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh removed a piece of skull from measuring approximately 10cm by 5cm, the biggest piece they had ever removed from a living patient. Medics then intentionally put him into a coma for a week to prevent him moving and further injuring himself.
Doctors believed he had only a 50 per cent chance of survival and told his parents, Neil and Pamela, his sister Sharron, 27, and brother Ian, 23, that it was likely he would be paralysed down his right side and that he might have lost his speech and sight. They also feared the injury to his brain might completely transform his personality.
But when Mr McLean was awoken from his coma he began to make a recovery. Gradually, he regained movement in the right side of his body and started to say a few words. Within weeks, he began to walk unaided and could hold a conversation.
Doctors allowed him to return home in time for his 20th birthday on 1 September. In six months’ time, doctors hope to replace the missing bone with a metal plate.
His mother said yesterday: “It’s an incredible recovery, considering what we were told. We were given very little hope. Once we knew he was going to live, the most worrying thing for us was that they said that his personality could change completely.
But he’s our Alistair: he’s thoughtful, he’s kind, he’s got his smile and his sense of humour; that’s the most important thing for us.”
His father, Neil, 51, added: “The first thing he communicated when he regained consciousness was ‘is everyone else on the lifeboat OK?’” THE UNLIKELY SURVIVORS
ALISTAIR McLean’s miraculous recovery is the latest in a series of against-the-odds survivals.
Chris Stewart, 12, survived “internal decapitation” separating his skull and neck, when he hit a barrier in a stock-car crash at Alton, Hampshire, last year.
Sarah Yeargain, of San Diego, California, somehow survived the loss of all her skin after a reaction to an antibiotic. She lived long enough to receive successful grafts of artificial skin.
In Kirkcaldy in October 1988, exiled Croat politician Nikola Stedul was shot in the mouth and chest by a former Yugoslav intelligence officer. The victim survived and now lives in Australia.
