Gold Logie winner Samuel Johnson has shared a horror image taken moments after a car hit – and nearly killed – him earlier this year. In a candid chat with Pete Helliar on Monday night’s episode of The Project, the 43-year-old actor and celebrated cancer research fundraiser recalled he didn’t recall the moment he was accidentally struck by a car on June 19. “I pulled into a slip road, and went and had a wee, and woke up a couple of weeks later. I wasn’t expected to survive. I nearly died,” Johnson said. “My face was really a mess, basically my whole right side was cactus. I inhaled glass. “I got hit between 40 and 50 km/h by a small white vehicle. I broke my skull, I fractured my upper neck, and luckily my face bore the brunt of the impact, so my face saved my brain from a lot of damage.“Basically I got hit fairly badly and by the time they got me to hospital, they rushed me into ICU, I tanked, and I had two loved ones with me, I was told later, that were put into the death room – the one with the fridge and the couch where you are private and you are able to be told the bad news.” The star credits his girlfriend, Emma Rooke, with saving his life – by ensuring that help reached him as soon as possible. “She kept me alive. She understood the importance of the golden hour – the hour from when you have an accident to receiving treatment is the most important hour.” The weirdest part, Johnson told Helliar, was waking up in hospital and not having any idea what had happened, having suffered from traumatic amnesia. “I woke up and I was really way more famous than I ever remembered being. Photographers were trying to get at me while I was inside and I wasn’t in a hospital – I as either in a mental home or my drink had been spiked,” he said. “Maybe I was kidnapped, maybe I was clinically insane. So, I thought all kinds of things. I was Russian for a while, I spoke with a heavy Russian accent in three-word sentences for a couple of days, and then I was a Japanese 11-year-old girl, and basically – basically what happens when your brain gets wobbled is you go loopy.” While he now appears to be OK, “a lot of the symptoms are now invisible and I’m still recovering”. And while that recovery continues, Johnson said he has a whole new appreciation for those who put him back together. “I will tell you what exactly I’ve learnt in real English, where you flick around status to dildos like me, seriously, from my acting or from my fundraising efforts – I mean, really, while we walk past the real heroes,” he said. “They are the people that put people like me who have a bad accident back together again. Pretty much from the moment I knew what was going on through to now, I’ve got a great respect for the wizards that worked not just on putting me back together, but on putting anyone back together, where it is Covid, a brain injury or cancer.“These are the genuine heroes of our world.”
Source: Sun Herald
