By DAVID NAGEL
SPREAD your forefinger and thumb as far apart as they can go – that’s the incalculably small difference between Tooradin Football Club president Greg Kelly losing his life or a limb recently.
The 57-year-old, a husband to Anne, father to Madeline, Chloe and Jordan, and grandfather of five, was driving from Kooweerup to Tooradin, on Wednesday 20 April, around 10.30am, when his 2004 Ford Econovan ran off Manks Road and hit a power pole.
“The police say it was lucky it hit the centre of the van, because another five or six inches to the right and I wouldn’t be here today,” said the life-long butcher, who currently runs businesses in Cranbourne and Tooradin.
Kelly’s recollection of the accident is sketchy to say the least.
“I had been to Tooradin to pick up some meat to deliver to a bakery in Kooweerup,” he said.
“I got to Kooweerup and remember receiving a call from (second in charge) Luke saying I needed to get back because we had some deliveries to make to Seaford and Mordialloc. I got my coffee and apple slice from the bakery and started to head home. I don’t remember anything after leaving the bakery. I don’t remember anything, I don’t remember turning onto Manks Road, nothing.”
Greg had ploughed, quite literally, head first into the pole, the thin layer of metal on the straight face of the van acting as minimal absorption on impact.
Greg was unconscious, slumped across the passenger’s seat, with head and chest injuries and his left leg jammed in the wreckage, when he received his first good stroke of luck. Laney, an SES volunteer, was driving in the same direction, slowed down, saw the damage in her rear-vision mirror and turned around.
She became Greg’s guardian angel for the next 90 minutes, calling authorities and staying with him in the wreckage.
“I remember little bits and pieces, I can’t see her, but I can hear her asking me questions like, ‘What’s your wife’s name?’ ‘What’s your son’s name?’ just to keep me going,” he said.
He also remembers flickering moments of the rescue.
“I can remember the Jaws of Life releasing the van off the pole,” he said.
“The leg was stuck in between, and the pressure on it was enormous. I just remember breathing a deep sigh of relief; it felt so good to be released from that pressure. I remember the fireman’s jacket wrapped around me, I felt like a teddy bear when he dragged me out. Then I remember the whoosh of the air of the helicopter blades and the big clunk of the door. After that I don’t remember anything, I was in ICU for five days.”
Word of the accident had started to filter through to the family, Anne confronted with a chilling sight after returning home from a lunch date with a friend.
“I came home and had the police at the front door,” she said.
“They told me what had happened and I just felt disbelief, they said your husband is not in a good way, it didn’t look good at that stage.”
The police made calls, the family gathered, and were preparing for the trip to the Royal Melbourne Hospital when Anne was asked to make a huge call under duress.
“Just before we were about to leave, I had the surgeon ring and ask for my permission to amputate Greg’s leg,” she said. In retrospect, the decision had already been made.
There was some debate about saving the leg, but granting permission to amputate was the right one according to Greg.
“The young surgeon who made the decision told me later, ‘If you want to punch someone in the nose, it’s me, because I made the decision to take your leg off,’ he said.
“He said the leg was stuffed and I would have been coming back for years for operations to try and get it right. It was probably two weeks later, I remember the nurse lifting the leg up, taking off all the bandages, and my leg was gone, that’s when it really started to hit home.”
Greg’s current situation is this.
He is undergoing physio, six days a week, as a permanent resident in Hawthorn, where a knee-cap full of plates is gradually being manipulated to move. His lower leg, which needs to heal to accept a prosthesis, is still giving him nerve pain, and needs to come good before he can learn to walk again, a result forecast for October.
But he is starting to have his little wins along the way.
Saturday was the first time he had been home since the accident, and the week before he struggled through his first footy match when Tooradin took on Doveton.
“Anne and I both starting crying when I came in the front door this morning, I can tell you, there’s no place like home,” he said.
And his mindset – well it’s amazingly strong, just like his family.
“I was so incredibly impressed with all my family, how they all stood up when it was needed,” he said.
”I just have to get this leg healed and I’ll be back doing what I want to do. I don’t see myself as a victim or anything like that, I see myself as very lucky. I had a knock to the head, I survived that, and the leg can be repaired, so I’m very fortunate, that’s how I look at it anyway. I just see this challenge as the next chapter of my life.”
Greg wanted to thank the endless stream of support that had overwhelmed his family.
“From old friends at the Beaconsfield Football Club, to the ones at Tooradin, to business partners, to people we haven’t seen for a long time, the community spirit has just been amazing,” he said.
“Anne didn’t have to make a meal for the first few weeks and the footy club has really embraced Jordan and the netball club the same with the grandkids.”
Greg and Anne had one final message to convey.
“Be careful, concentrate, and appreciate what you’ve got because it can all be taken away from you so quickly,” Greg said.
“I’m just so lucky; I was nearly given up as gone, so to be given another chance is priceless really.”
And Anne?
“We’re just grateful he’s here, because it was touch and go there for a while.”
Spot on Anne, about as touch and go as the distance between your forefinger and your thumb!
