Kerri-Anne opens up about husband John’s ‘miracle’ progress

IN a new interview, Kerri-Anne Kennerley describes the amazing moment she finally felt her husband John had “really come back” to her.

KERRI-ANNE Kennerley has opened about her husband John’s “miracle” recovery following his life-threatening fall in March this year.

In a cover interview for the latest issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly, out today, the Aussie TV icon says her husband, while still paralysed, has been making remarkable progress.

“I hesitate to use the word miracle but for us that is what John’s recovery has been like, a series of minor miracles,” Kerri-Anne tells the magazine.

“It started with him being able to breathe unassisted. And that was such an important step. Otherwise, he faced a life being attached to a respirator, being fed through a tube in his nose.”

Kerri-Anne appears on the cover of the July Australian Women’s Weekly, out today.

Doctors had twice tried removing John’s resuscitation tube, only to quickly reinstate it as he was unable to breathe by himself. It was a case of third time lucky, says Kerri-Anne, when doctors tried again six weeks ago.

“Survival is the first thing you hope for in a situation such as this and I was grateful John was alive, but if that life was to have any quality at all, he needed at least to breathe for himself,” she said.

Kerri-Anne recounted the agonising seconds when John’s tube was removed for the third time — followed by the wave of relief when he let out the “shallowest of sighs” — his first unassisted breath.

Kerri-Anne Kennerley brings John’s beloved dog Digger to him.

“It was as though a great weight had lifted from our shoulders, from both John and me. That was the moment when I felt he’d really come back to me.”

John slipped and fell from a balcony at a golf event in Coffs Harbour in March, and while the accident initially appeared minor, its results were catastrophic: the 75-year-old severely damaged his C3 and C4 vertebrae and slightly damaged his C2.

Kerri-Anne says that one of the doctors treating John later admitted he initially thought treatment was a “waste of time,” so severe were his injuries.

While doctors say it will take at least another nine months for them to assess what long-term physical abilities John will be capable of, he’s already making remarkable progress in terms of his mobility, showing movement in his legs.

From a slow start in rehab, he can now cycle for 20 minutes at a time, and can even stand up thanks to the metal braces and screws that stabilise him.

“But it’s not quite standing as you or I might,” says Kerri-Anne.

“John is eating and speaking and has reasonably good movement in his legs. He can sit in a wheelchair, which means he can go outside and sit in the sun, which is wonderful.”

While John is still unable to move his arms, his level of mobility shows remarkable progress from when we saw him last, during Kerri-Anne’s televised interview with Channel Seven’s Sunday Night program in April. At the time, John was still confined to his hospital bed and a weeping Kerri-Anne told interviewer Mike Willesee that “life as I knew it is over.”

Kerri Anne couldn’t contain her emotions during her first TV interview after the accident. Picture: Channel 7

Read the full, eight-page interview with Kerri-Anne in the July issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly, out today.

Originally published as Kerri-Anne opens up about husband John’s ‘miracle’ progress