Broadcasted on Radio Solent 20 March 2012
Excerpt from Radio Solent programme aired 20 March 2012, telling James Smith’s story

Dominic Blake: That’s right Julian, I’m afraid it’s the stuff of nightmares, James was a successful executive, quite a high flier, but on a night out in 2007 his life as he knew it pretty much came to an end following a brutal street robbery while he was on an overseas trip. Now he was stabilized and sent back to England for treatment but the long term damage that he’d suffered wasn’t picked up by the NHS and he says that that almost cost him his life. This is James’ story.

James Smith: I’d been out with clients on a corporate entertainment evening and I guess I decided about midnight to pack everybody else off in a cab and send them home, and I was walking to a cab station, some lads saw me and decided to rob me, I was hospitalized for nearly 2 and a half weeks, 3 weeks, broken ribs, nearly lost my eye, and severe head trauma, with that 3 weeks the visible side could be quite well identified and I healed reasonably quickly, but when I was discharged, that was it, I was simply discharged, fed into the system, no real after-care, and I guess that’s when I started to – er – fall way behind where I thought I should be in terms of recuperation – and not being able to get up, not being able to go to sleep, not being able to talk properly, I totally went into my own shell, became fearful of pretty much everyone and everything, you know, even the phone ringing was a nightmare for me, couldn’t face a thing. I tried to take my life two or three times, and that was after weeks and weeks and weeks of just continuing negative thoughts, I’m still working my way through the whole recuperation process, but some light, a big part of light, was when I stumbled across my endocrinologist and within moments of talking to him he quickly identified what one of the problems could be. During the attack I received head trauma which affected my pituitary gland and my pituitary gland is now almost defunct, completely dead. Now that gland produces major chemicals which basically enable a human to function so the treatment is to substitute some of those chemicals, hormones, and immediately after receiving those you start to feel better. If I hadn’t received help I guess I’d be no further forward, and probably – I’d hate to say it – maybe even dead. I don’t think I would have survived the continual frustration of going through the process, going through the machine that is the NHS, getting no further forward every day. Anybody that’s had a head injury should be discharged from hospital with a clear plan to look at their blood work, look for signs of this problem, a survival plan if you will. The reality is if you don’t get that clear understanding, the knowledge of what’s going on around you, what’s happening, how it’s happening, why it’s happening, your life turns upside down. Everything you’ve ever earnt, worked for, built up in your life, leaves you and you can’t understand why, and ultimately that causes a lot of people a lot of stress, and it caused me, particularly me, to want to leave it.