Ex-pollies painful road to recovery made easier by RDH

Former Darwin City Council alderman and Labor politician John Bailey shares how he’s recovering after being thrown into a world of chaos

Former Darwin alderman and politician John Bailey is recovering from a serious incident and is lucky to still be alive. Picture: Che Chorley

FORMER Darwin council alderman and Labor politician John Bailey knows all too well how life can change in the blink of an eye.

A selfless good Samaritan act just under two months ago turned his life upside down and took him on a painful road to recovery.

“Something wrong was happening so I responded to it and this is how I’ve ended up,” he said.

For the past six weeks he has endured about a dozen operations, been pumped full of drugs to help deal with pain he thought he would never be able to cope with and is now faced with further operations to repair his broken body.

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He says it has been stressful and the road ahead is uncertain, but he is thankful for the health workers and quality care that kept him alive.

“Yes it’s been stressful, I’ve gone from someone who has been leading a full and active life with adventure motorcycling every morning, I used to go stand-up paddling, windsurfing … life was great,” he said.

Former Darwin alderman and politician John Bailey is recovering from a serious incident and is lucky to still be alive. He is at Palmerston Hospital recovering and undergoing rehabilitation. Picture: Che Chorley

“I now have a broken leg, half a dozen broken ribs, my nose has been sewn back on again, I have chunks of meat off me all over and as my wife said, she didn’t know on the night whether I would still have a hand the following morning because it was only held on by a flap of skin and not a lot else.

“That right arm and me have been in theatre 11 times and half of the tendons are no longer connected after losing one of the two major blood vessels.

“One of the thankyous needs to go to an emergency critical care nurse, who rushed to my aid when others couldn’t stop the bleeding.

“One of my two major blood vessels was bleeding out and this woman raced to help and basically stuck her finger in my artery to stop it bleeding.

“I’m lucky to be alive.

“At the moment my leg is in a brace, I still have to have bone grafts to my arm and they are talking about at least another year before they know what degree of functionality I’ll get back.”

Mr Bailey said with plenty of think time ahead, he was trying to work out how he could continue some of the activities he used to do with so much damage to his hand and so little use of it.

Irrespective of what use he gets back in his hand he will be eternally grateful for the health care he has received.

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“I’m grateful to quite a few people over the past seven weeks for the care I have received at the Royal Darwin Hospital,” he said.

“I must have had about 30 medical people with me, from the plastic surgeons, to the orthopaedics, to the trauma workers to everything else.

“Without that quality care, who knows what state I would be in. It was because of that care I am still here.

“I have just transferred across to rehab at the Palmerston Regional Hospital and my guess is I have probably four to six weeks more here before I go home.

“I want to thank the medical people for keeping me alive and for putting me back together. We have a quality team of health staff in the Territory we should be proud of.”