WARNING - THIS STORY CONTAINS A GRAPHIC IMAGE
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A man whose face was sliced off by a sheet of metal will feature in a TV programme. Simon Wright was expected to die after the incident.
He was rushed to hospital after a sheet of industrial metal sliced through his face. TV cameras follow the trauma team at Royal Stoke University Hospital as they tend to Simon, reports StokeOnTrentLive.
He features in the first episode of 999 Critical Condition, which is on show on Channel 5. The trauma team leaders and surgeons work tirelessly to assess and stem many of the facial issues caused by the industrial accident.
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Doctors were astounded that he was still alive and able to tell the tale, Simon told the Daily Star. He has no memory of the incident.
His job, as a press setter, is to set-up mechanical and hydraulic presses which produce powdered metal parts. Recalling the harrowing situation, Simon, who who has a 10-month-old daughter, told the Daily Star: "I don't actually remember the accident itself.
"But things have been pieced together to a certain degree for me. So to my understanding, I was bending a piece of work, or possibly even taking a little bit of a bend out of a piece of work. I'm not 100 per cent sure.
"And the steel bar snapped in half under the pressure, with one half going out of the back of the press and the other half going forwards, straight into me which is less than ideal. So the piece of metal just snapped from my understanding, just at the wrong place at the wrong time, I suppose."
Remembering back to his time at the Royal Stoke, Simon added: "I was unconscious from what I understand and I’d suffered pretty grim trauma. I think I was knocked out and then went to hospital.
"We’ve since seen the footage of what is going out tonight and I was sort of awake but you wouldn’t have got any sense out of me. Apparently they asked me at the time if they could ring my wife and I had said ‘no, it’s alright don’t worry about it’"
The first time dad, who had a five-month-old daughter at the time of the accident, revealed that it took weeks for him to regain any form of memory. He said: "My accident happened on December 2, 2021 and I can’t remember much from then until Christmas day - probably because Christmas is a significant day. But I actually can’t remember a thing until around December 17 or 18.
"I remember my wife coming to the hospital which to be honest I thought she’d only been a couple of times, but she was like 'no, I was there everyday. I've done that two-hour round trip everyday.'"
It was Simon's wife, who was at his side to explain the extent of his injuries including the irreparable damage to his eye socket. I think my wife had sort of told me about my eye when I was starting to remember things and obviously when you see it in the mirror, it’s a bit grim but you just accept it.
"Once you’ve seen yourself and got the information you can process it. And you look at yourself and know 'yeah, that's not going to come back and that's gone' but it could have been even worse so we’ll take it for what it is, explained the brave industrial worker.
Speaking about the damage to his face, he told the Daily Star: "I’m not sure how many breaks there were but I know, there’s no eye-socket, no cheekbone and they’ve all been replaced with plates. The jaw I think has got two plates holding it together.
"The scalp where they obviously had to do brain surgery, they took the top of the scalp off and I think that’s held together by eight plates. My nose has been rebuilt and I think there’s a couple of plates on the right hand side of my forehead.
"I can't remember for sure but I think somebody said I had around 19 plates in total, but I could be mistaken." Commending surgeon's who had worked tirelessly on his face, he commented: "I can’t get over the job they’ve done, it’s not my original face, it’s not but it’s not too bad, it’s alright.
"But we’ve got a young daughter and still being able to play with her and see her grow older is far more important than damage to my face. It could have been a lot worse." Simon went on to say: "From what health and safety have said they generally would not expect to speak to somebody who’s had that sort of trauma - you would have died or wouldn’t have been in a position to communicate so yeah, it’s bad but it could have been worse. I just look at it like, it’s the best of all the outcomes. That’s where you just have to say I’m really lucky to be here."