'Elvis' is back from the dead
ELVIS impersonator Derek Russell has revealed how he almost died after falling 15 feet from the top of a lorry's load.
The self-employed Magdalen lorry driver, who has helped raise 67,633 for local causes over the past 11 years through doing twice-yearly Elvis tribute concerts, spent about two weeks in the neurological critical care unit at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, with a severe head injury.
At the time, doctors told his wife Christine that half the people suffering this type of injury did not survive and most of the others remained disabled for life, with only a few lucky ones recovering fully.
Mr Russell is one of those fortunate few, with only some plastic surgery on his hand to show from the experience – and now he is preparing to do another Elvis tribute concert, the '07 Comeback Special Show, at Searles Holiday Centre in Hunstanton on Sunday, in aid of the Children's Liver Foundation.
It was on March 19, a week after his last concert, that he was standing on top of the load on the back of his lorry when a piece of timber broke.
He plunged 15 feet to the road, banging his head and falling unconscious.
Mrs Russell was one of the first on the scene.
Her husband was taken by road ambulance to Lynn's Queen Elizabeth Hospital but its CAT scanner was not working so he was transferred by air ambulance to Addenbrooke's, arriving there just 19 minutes later.
He was admitted straight to the critical care unit and kept in an induced coma for four days before being brought round.
But Mrs Russell said it was not until March 27 that he began responding by squeezing her hand as she spoke to him, and April 1 that he was awake and talking to family visitors.
He was switched to a high dependency ward, but his memory was poor and his only recollection of Addenbrooke's was of a female blackbird coming up to his wheelchair in a garden, she said.
Mr Russell pointed out: "It's Christine and those close to me who went through the trauma – I was in a deep sleep for most of the time.
"I survived because of the wonders of modern technology and the care I received there.
"I can't thank them enough."
He was taken back to the Lynn hospital on April 20 and three days later allowed home, where he continued to receive visits from neurological and physiotherapy team members until August.
On October 7, he began rehearsing for the early '70s Elvis show, where he will be supported by the Something Else group and comedian Patrick Burke, after medics told him it would be "brilliant rehabilitation". Mrs Russell said: "He has worked really hard to get himself fit again and able to do this show."
Tickets, 9, for Sunday's show are available from the Russells on 01553 810771.
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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