Northland couple Rob and Elysha Ludlow are forever grateful to the community for their support in the year following the assault. Photo / Michael Cunningham
This time last year, Northlander Rob Ludlow was on top of the world, celebrating the birth of his baby girl and about to enter his first bodybuilding competition.
The new dad was out in Whangārei with a friend celebrating his three-week-old daughter Frankie when his world was turned upside down.
Ludlow doesn’t remember anything about the February 26 street attack that happened out of the blue on Water St and left him in a coma fighting for his life in Auckland hospital.
Once he was weaned off his ventilator and began breathing on his own, he was moved into the neurosurgery ward.
His fight continued for another five months in rehab, as he re-learned everything from scratch: how to eat, walk, talk, and grasp the letters of the alphabet so he could read again.
One year after the senseless assault, Ludlow and his wife Elysha are slowly piecing their lives together.
That Ludlow, then 36, even survived the traumatic head injury was miraculous, medical staff have constantly told him.
And when he returned home in September after those seven long months away, receiving all-the-clock care and striving to regain his memory, he was well and truly delighted.
“I was really excited to get home because I couldn’t really remember where I lived,” he said.
“I thought we still lived in Tikipunga ... I had no memory of this house at all until we drove up and I saw the driveway and I thought, ‘that’s right, we live up here’.
“Really I was supposed to die at the start, and once I survived and I was in the hospital everyone was amazed at how well I was doing.”
“Having Rob come this far, we feel really lucky, because the outcome could have been a lot worse,” Elysha said.
“Out of all the outcomes they gave us, Rob’s was the best-case scenario, better than the best-case scenario really. To have him home like this is just incredible.”
Ludlow underwent multiple surgeries while he was in hospital including a craniectomy to relieve the pressure on his brain and a cranioplasty to repair his skull.
In April, he was transferred to a rehabilitation centre in Auckland, and Elysha and the children - baby Frankie and their son Finn who was then 21 months old - uprooted their lives and rented a house nearby.
Every morning in rehab, Ludlow would wake not remembering where he was.
It was his sheer determination to get better that saw him discharged earlier than planned – that and pestering the medical staff to let him go home.
“I knew as soon as those personality traits kicked in, and once he realised the condition he was in ... I always said to everyone, ‘if anyone can do this Rob can’,” Elysha said.
“I went back [to rehab] three weeks ago and they all told me how amazing I was,” Ludlow said.
“Most people who go through what I went through, they stay in that situation where they’re never that good.”
The Ludlows are incredibly positive about their ordeal.
But there’s no hiding from the fact the assault has had long-term repercussions.
Ludlow, now 37, has lasting injuries from that night; he’s blind in his left eye and has lost his sense of taste and smell.
He has lingering shoulder and knee issues, has trouble with his memory, and is often tired by the afternoon.
His reading has improved but is slow and laborious as he tries to make sense of the words.
One of the first things Ludlow did when he got home, apart from eating a burger and going fishing off Pataua beach, was get the names of his kids tattooed on his arm to help him remember them.
“Rob struggles with his brain in many ways every single day, and some of these struggles may be for the rest of his life,” Elysha said.
“I’m very lucky to be out of the wheelchair,” Ludlow said.
“They thought I’d get out of my wheelchair but didn’t think I’d get off my walking frame.
“To me, it was always to go diving again. My whole life was always about diving and being here for my family.”
Though Ludlow isn’t allowed to scuba dive again, he hopes to be able to free-dive, and he’s also back driving short distances in his car.
He is fully mobile, hits the gym most days, and enjoys walking, spending time at the beach, and taking the boat out with his family.
His goals are to read a 1000-page book and compete in the bodybuilding competition he was training for before the assault.
Next year he’d like to return to the job he loves, as construction manager at Whangārei commercial building company Guyco Construction.
As for the community support, that’s been “just unreal”, the couple said.
“All my mates from work have been popping round and helping clean the house up and look after the outside,” Ludlow said.
“Everyone has been amazing. Givealittle has been unbelievable.”
The Givealittle page raised nearly $100,000 and meant Elysha and the kids could be in Auckland with Ludlow and focus on his recovery without extra financial stress.
Elysha said the Givealittle comments were also a huge support.
“Some days they were the only good thing that I had going on,” Elysha said.
“When I could start reading them to Rob and he started to understand, he was just blown away. Even sometimes now we’ll go through and read them.
“The biggest thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
“We felt it every day, that the community was fighting with us. It meant a lot; it means a lot still.”
These days it’s the “normal things” the Ludlows appreciate the most.
“It’s amazing having him home for all those normal things, like having him walk into the kitchen and put the kettle on,” Elysha said.
“Those little things that are now so amazing, whereas before we wouldn’t have thought twice about them.
“You miss normal when they’re totally taken away from you.”
Police have arrested a man and are referring to the case as resolved.
Jenny Ling is a news reporter and features writer for the Northern Advocate. She has a special interest in covering health, roading, lifestyle, business, and animal welfare issues.