Back from the brink after bashing

Almost a year ago, Stuart Martin lay in a coma - on a life support
 system and fighting to survive after being bashed in a vicious street
attack in Taradale. This week he returned to Hawke's Bay. He spoke to
Roger Moroney about the long road to recovery.
QuoteBox1: It's kind of like being a child again - I'm learning to do things for the first time.
People were so good to us. I can't thank everyone enough. Recovering bashing victim Stuart "Stuey" Martin
Body1:
 A COUPLE OF days after Stuart "Stuey" Martin was brought out of an induced coma he received a visitor.
 He was conscious but his brain was not calling the shots.
Confused and unsure where he was (he insisted he was in Wanaka) he had no co-ordination or ability to put sentences together properly.
His old mate Steve Fountain had arrived from Queenstown. They had known each other for about seven years, and had flown together to the deep south.
Steve had been shocked at the sight of his bruised and bewildered mate, but was buoyed by the fact Stuart recognised him.
He told Stuart that in a year he was getting married - and he wanted Stuart to be there as one of his groomsmen.
Stuart took it in.
"That was my motivation," he said. "My motivation to get back to where I was - to come back and be at his wedding."
It had been a wedding, just days earlier, that had brought Brisbane-based Stuart to Napier. It was to have been a happy visit to be there for the big day of his mate Ryan McBrearty.
He'd also met Ryan in Queenstown.
Stuart loved New Zealand, and made friends easily.
Two nights after arriving in Napier in February last year he had joined what was planned as the traditional exuberant night out ... the stag do.
The friends had had a few drinks and a lot of laughs - although Stuart has lost those memories.
Early Friday morning, having become separated from his mates in Taradale, he was found unconscious in Gloucester St with massive head injuries. His life then changed.
"I can't remember anything. I've lost about two weeks of memory."
Three days after being admitted to Hawke's Bay Hospital's intensive care unit he was brought out of the medically induced coma and his condition was updated from "critical" to "serious but stable".
His parents, Cameron and Margaret, arrived from their Berwick-upon-Tweed home in northern England to be at his bedside.
The tears they shed after first seeing their son underlined the injuries he had sustained, and the long recovery journey ahead.
His first conscious memories were a long way from reality. He had no idea what had happened. At first he had thought he was in India.
"It's really strange. I could clearly see piles of spices as if I were in a spice market."
Later he believed, and insisted in frustration to medical staff, that he was in Wanaka.
"I thought I'd been flown there in a Hercules and I'd been stuck on the runway in Christchurch. I was angry about that."
The initial prognosis was that Stuart's long-term recovery and eventual condition could go either way. Therapists put in place a 14-day plan where he was told three words to remember each day. He struggled. Day after day went by and he could not remember the words.
Fourteen days was the accepted time used as an indicator to future healing. If he couldn't master the memory test within that time it was unlikely he ever would. His parents had feared the worst, despite maintaining an optimistic, encouraging front.
On the 13th day the therapist had given him his three words for that day ... "hope, pain and heal".
And on that 13th day he remembered them.
"I was on my way."
His mate, Steven, and other mates, also added to the healing process in their own way.
"They used to smuggle in KFC and burgers," Stuart said laughing.
They also slipped by the "guards" a couple of times so Steven could take wheelchair-bound Stuart for a walk outside.
 They had watched the Lowe Corporation Rescue Helicopter taking off, and Stuart's mind had flicked into flying - to the commercial pilot work he had been doing in Brisbane.
"That gave me the drive to get back to where I had been before - I wanted to get out of that wheelchair," Stuart said.
But flying is still a long way off.
Resuming that role is a part of his life still in the balance.
"I've just got to wait and see."
It was the serious "rating 3 coma" he was tagged with that could prove to be the barrier, but the focus of determination in Stuart's eyes when he talks about flying tells you he is treating the barrier as a temporary hurdle.
What encouraged him were the words of one of his therapists back in the UK. "He said to me that if anyone is up for a case to fly again then I am that person."
Four weeks after being admitted to intensive care Stuart, unsteady and with a face still bearing the scars of what had happened, and flanked by his parents, left hospital. They had been loaned a house and car by a Hastings woman to stay in for the week before flying back to England. "That was amazing. People were so good to us. I can't thank everyone enough."
After arriving back on the family farm in England the frustration and depression had grown as he struggled with a mind - and bodily reactions - that just would not work properly.
"I had some bad moments," he said.
He had been away from home for more than seven years - that time being spread between New Zealand and Australia where all his friends were.
"So I had 10 months back at home with Mum and Dad. It drove me mad," he said with a grin. "But I probably drove them mad as well."
He recalled at one point his mother gently throwing a set of car keys to him.
"I couldn't catch them.
"I went outside later and threw a tennis ball against a wall and tried to catch it when it bounced back. I couldn't."
For a man who had played a lot of sport, the frustration had been overwhelming.
But with four or five therapy sessions every week, and his own determination to get back Downunder for the wedding of his mate Steve, he had pushed hard.
"The improvement is still going on," he said, adding therapists had told him that process could take another five years.
He was looking forward to riding a bicycle while in Napier - but had some trepidation.
"It's kind of like being a child again - I'm learning to do things for the first time."
But it's clear he has turned a corner.
His mind is alert and his humour is undimmed.
"I used to play pool a lot back when I was living in Queenstown - and I always used to beat Steve. When I was there this time we had a game and he beat me, so I said I wanted a rematch. And next time I trounced him!" Stuart said with a wide smile.
 He added, simply: "I'm back."