Told she wouldn’t survive: Miracle surfer girl’s extraordinary recovery from horror smash
Ella Anwar’s family said goodbye to her several times after a horror smash which she wasn’t expected to survive. But she relearnt to chew, talk, move, walk and even have a baby. This is her extraordinary tale of how she came back from the brink.
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Whether plunging into foaming whitewash, riding wave after exhilarating wave or floating in a tranquil blue calm, face lifted towards the sun, the ocean has always meant freedom, happiness and peace for Ella Anwar.
Rejoicing in its salty depths has been a daily constant since she was introduced to swimming as a baby and surfing aged five, first growing up on Sydney’s Northern Beaches and, for the past seven years, living on the Gold Coast.
It’s a passion Ella crafted into a career as a swim teacher after leaving school at 16, and one which brought love barrelling into her life after meeting Indonesian pro surfer Andre Anwar on a family holiday in Bali a year later.
Soon dividing their time between the Palm Beach home Ella shares with her family and Andre’s home in Sumbawa, it wasn’t long before the young couple were engaged and dreaming of raising their own sun-bleached grommets by the beach.
“I just love the water and I love kids,’’ she laughs.
When an exciting full-time opportunity opened up for Ella, then 21, at the Laurie Lawrence Swim School Burleigh, Andre, 20, relocated to Australia and started the process of becoming a permanent resident.
He was halfway through his first night shift at a local supermarket, Ella’s parents and her brother blissfully asleep, when devastation hit with the speed, force and chaos of a dumping wave.
Out with friends that drizzly night, Ella took a corner too fast in an unfamiliar vehicle, clipped the gutter and slammed sideways into a power pole.
Two passengers emerged unscathed.
Ella took the full impact. She wasn’t expected to survive.
It would take her love of the ocean and an ocean of love to bring Ella back to the surface – and put her dreams again within grasp.
Clustered in a private room of the Gold Coast University Hospital with husband Andrew, son Ryan and Andre that September 2019 pre-dawn morning, a tearful Louise Donohue, Ella’s mum, heard a doctor gently say Ella had suffered a severe brain injury and was on life support.
“First of all, we were told she wasn’t going to survive the first 24 hours and to say goodbye. But she did. Then on day three, her brain started swelling so we were told to prepare for the worst again, but she got through that. She got pneumonia and we were again told to prepare,” recalls Louise, 55, who works for Virgin Airlines.
“Then as the days were going into weeks, it looked like she was going to survive but they were preparing us for the brain injury.
“Damage was so severe that potentially she was never going to communicate or walk, that we would have to look into a specialist home for her to go to. The doctor’s words were that she would never be the Ella we knew before the crash. I remember thinking, like hell she won’t be. She’s my Ella and she’s coming home, if I have anything to do with it.”
Still, Louise worried about Andre.
“It was very painful but after about three weeks I sat down with Andre and said, ‘You need to go home [to Sumbawa] and start a new life’; I didn’t want him to endure all this pain if she wasn’t coming home.
“He just looked at me and said that while her heart was still beating and she was still breathing, he was never leaving her side.”
Ella regained consciousness and, after about a month, was moved from intensive care to acute neurology to start rehabilitation, before being transferred to the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Unit (BIRU) in Brisbane’s Princess Alexandra Hospital.
She also had surgery to repair her broken upper left arm.
Back at work full-time Andrew, 56, and Ryan, 21, visited when they could, while Louise and Andre – she worked mornings, he nights – spent every afternoon with Ella.
“I couldn’t get my head around this brain injury so I started researching and joining [online] support groups, and the biggest things that came from survivors was they wished they’d worked at their rehab harder,” Louise says.
Ella, who cannot recall the week before her accident nor most of her hospital stay, could only “lie in bed and move her eyes” initially.
She had to learn how to chew, swallow, talk, move her limbs, walk, write, swipe on her phone.
Basically, Ella spent every morning with occupational, speech and physio therapists learning to live independently again.
“It was a hard time, it really was, but we just stayed very positive, very focused. One way or another, we were going to get our Ella back. That was our motto,” Louise says.
“So I learned everything I could from the therapists and got them to leave homework. The rule of visiting Ella was, anyone who entered that room had to do some homework with her. You weren’t allowed to just sit and look at her.”
Louise laughs, recalling how she and Andre only allowed Ella to eat her much-anticipated nightly bowl of ice cream with her significantly weaker right hand.
“Ella couldn’t talk then so she just had to do as she was told!”
They’d been read the “riot act” and knew it was against medical advice but, during Ella’s first home visit two weeks before Christmas 2019, Andrew, Ryan and Andre carefully carried her into their backyard pool.
That’s when it became clear their beloved surfer girl really was on her way back to home shores.
“Ella couldn’t talk very well but she was just determined to get into that pool, so we tied her feeding tube into her (hair) bun and started trying to get her to walk from side to side. They didn’t find out she’d been in the pool but we hadn’t put enough sunscreen on her and she got really burnt, so I got in big trouble,” laughs Louise, who had played joyful recordings of kids’ splashing and swimming to Ella, and Andre played their favourite music, while she was in a coma.
“She’s a person who is usually outside all day, every day. We just knew as soon as she got in that water, it would be her happy place and it was. It gave her a goal, to work hard with her rehab, so she could come home and get in the pool again. Every weekend we were able to bring her home, we got her walking in that pool.
“We saw improvement very quickly. Within a month she was walking unaided in the pool, though on land she was still wheelchair bound.’’
Barely four months after the accident, Ella was discharged to continue her therapies through Robina Community Health and in the pool.
Ella describes the freedom of being in the water and the progress made “so easily” there as giving her “the strength to keep going”.
“When she got home, the weirdest thing was she couldn’t walk but she could swim laps in the pool,” Louise says.
“She remembered all her strokes. It was insane. It was indescribable – she could even do butterfly. She could do butterfly but couldn’t walk.’’
A party planned for the first anniversary of her accident to celebrate Ella’s recovery instead became her and Andre’s wedding day, the desire to walk down the aisle and profess her vows extra motivation during therapy sessions.
“It was so hard, it took me ages but I got there and I was so happy,’’ drawls Ella slowly but clearly, of the intimate September 20, 2020, ceremony at Bilinga Beach and reception at the local surf club.
Guests from around the world, prevented from attending by Covid lockdowns, Zoomed in from their own home celebrations.
Back from their honeymoon at Tangalooma Island Resort, Andre added surf coaching and working at a fruit shop to his supermarket role while Ella returned to the Burleigh swim school as a co-teacher.
And she got back on her surfboard. “It just makes me feel so proud of myself and happy,” she says.
“It’s just so cool to be able to actually stand up on a board, I didn’t think I’d be able to. I can’t do tricks like I used to, but now I just stand there and go straight!”
Gold Coast University Hospital critical care services’ medical director Dr Peter Velloza says diffuse axonal injury (DAI) – the shearing of connecting nerve fibres as the brain shifts and rotates inside the skull, often seen in road trauma victims – results in varying levels of injury and recovery outcomes. Ella’s injuries were “very serious and very significant”.
“From the family’s perspective, this is a miraculous outcome and I completely understand that. From a medical perspective, Ella has had a very good outcome from expectations at the very first injury and we’re very pleased she’s made the recovery that she has,” Velloza says. “While much of Ella’s recovery would be attributed to her strength of character and the strength of person herself … our job is to make sure we give [patients] every opportunity to rehabilitate from their injuries so I’m very proud of our part in Ella’s care.”
BIRU senior staff specialist Dr Rachael Nunan describes the extra work, support and motivation put into Ella’s rehabilitation by Louise, Andre and her family as “a game-changer”. “In-patient rehabilitation is really just the start of that very complicated rehabilitation journey and people typically identify their main goal as just to get out of hospital, and at that stage we try to maximise their independence with walking, with completing self-care, completing basic day-to-day activities, and enabling them to communicate their wants and needs, and participate in family relationships.
“Once people get home they begin to re-evaluate where they’re at and really begin to look forward and engage in that longer-term journey,’’ Nunan says.
“Ella was a very determined young woman. Her impatience and her keenness to push boundaries and not accept ‘no’ for an answer served to her benefit.”
That cheeky baby girl giggling, splashing and moving so confidently, joyfully, in the pool is Laia Lakey Indah Anwar.
The brown-eyed, curly-haired mermaid named for the feisty Star Wars heroine, the seaside village where her dad learnt to surf and the Indonesian word for “beautiful” is the miracle her parents barely dared hope for.
Warned by doctors children might not be possible or wise, Ella and Andre fell pregnant “first go” and, after an uneventful pregnancy, welcomed their daughter via caesarean section at the Gold Coast University Hospital – the same place Laia’s mother’s life was saved – on July 12, 2021.
The young couple celebrated Laia’s first birthday with a cake-smash photo shoot, party and family holiday to introduce their baby to her grandparents and extended family in Sumbawa. A second holiday is planned for her second birthday in July.
Ella is exploring deep brain stimulation – surgery to implant electrodes generating electrical impulses to control abnormal brain activity, commonly used to treat Parkinson’s disease – at some point to treat a rare, otherwise incurable tremor which developed after the accident.
But for the moment, she’s simply enjoying everyday life.
“[Motherhood] has been amazing. I just love her so much. She is sooooo cheeky ... and she absolutely loves the water, she smiles when we get to swimming,’’ beams Ella, who takes Laia to swim lessons three times a week with the help of Louise or Andre, who now combines surf coaching with a new job as venue operations officer at Gold Coast Recreation Centre, Tallebudgera.
In pleasing synchronicity, Laia is being taught to swim by Emma Lawrence at the Burleigh school where Ella once taught Emma’s youngest daughter Harper, now nine.
Emma, daughter of legend Laurie, and operations manager for the Kids Alive water safety program, describes her friend and colleague as an “absolute inspiration” and proof of the physical, emotional and social benefits of swimming, regardless of ability.
Kids Alive partners with Austswim’s MATE program, which aims to increase access and inclusion for people with a disability or lifelong injury.
“Ella has made this incredible recovery. She is the most wonderful, attentive mother who is providing all the needs of her child and just takes everything in her stride,’’ says Emma, 37.
“There’s not been any challenge that she’s not been able to overcome, so she’s really shown her ability to have that positive growth mindset.
She knows, ‘I can do anything; it might take me a little bit longer but I can do anything’.’’
The pair often catch-up at Custard Canteen, an 800m walk along Tallebudgera Creek from Ella’s home – a once three-hour round trip she’s whittled down to a mere 22 minutes.
A morning coffee and chat with locals along the creek also increase motivation for her morning walks.
And Ella has re-mastered a bicycle with the help of her physio, adding to her independence.
“Every day in my life, I see slight improvements in what I can do. But then there are some days I just can’t do something – yesterday I couldn’t write, but I can again today. Some days I forget words, others I remember everything. Some days I could be in a rage from frustrations,’’ says Ella.
“But every day is getting better and better, and I am very grateful to have special people around me. I have accepted my new me and am living my best life.
“I wanted to do things on my own and now I am. It’s amazing. I just get up every day and do the best I can.’’
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