Blinded but fighting back
Dean Straker never saw the sky rocket that exploded in his eye.
The Nelson father was at a large family fireworks evening, standing at the edge of a roped-off area of the Cable Bay foreshore, making sure no children entered.
‘‘I was looking up at the display. It came from my blindside. For a split second I thought I had been hit with a stone because the thump was so hard, it spun me 180 degrees and knocked me over. It just felt like I had been king hit.
‘‘I crawled up the beach on my hands and knees. Everything was black.’’
He put his hand to his eye and it came away covered in blood from a lacerated eyelid. Then the pain kicked in.
‘‘I could smell my eyeball burning and I could feel it burning. I have had heaps of injuries and accidents, but I have never had anything that put me in shock like that.’’
The starburst-style rocket came from the side, about 10 metres away, in an area where no-one was lighting fireworks at the time. The best guess is that it may have fallen over as it fired.
An off-duty paramedic in the crowd prised his eye open and poured water into it to try to extinguish the burning cluster of sulphur and tiny flecks of metal which are still being removed days later.
His wife Hannah, who was at the display with their 13-year-old son George, kept up the water treatment on the way to hospital – with no cellphone reception it was quicker for a friend to drive him.
Straker says the care from the hospital emergency staff and specialists in Nelson and Christchurch since has been ‘‘brilliant’’, particularly from opthalmologist Rob Jones.
But a week after the Saturday night accident, he is coming to terms with the prospect of never being able to see out his right eye. He faces a fight to save his natural eye and not have to use a prosthetic.
The 51-year-old father of three can see the irony of the freak accident. He is an adventurer, used to taking calculated risks.
A few weeks ago the former national crosscountry paragliding champion was flying in the Himalayas and motorbiking through treacherous mountain passes in India. He used to own Nelson’s rockclimbing venue, Vertical Limits.
‘‘That’s the weird thing. Where I have just been paragliding is probably the riskiest thing I have done in my life. We were up 4500-5000 metres; we would fly 60-70 kilometres through the mountains. Then you go to a family barbecue in Cable Bay and wham ...’’
Straker will have another set of tests on his eye tomorrow. He is amused by the specialists’ medical language to describe his chances of seeing out of it again as ‘‘sub-optimal’’ and ‘‘non-favourable’’.
In fact, despite the fatigue and continuing pain from his injury – his damaged eye automatically follows his good eye causing discomfort – he is in remarkably good spirits.
His family and friends help foster that. Friends in England sent him a list of famous one-eyed people, from the military genius Hannibal to comic book spy boss Nick Fury to Kurt Russell’s character Snake Plissken from Escape from New York.
His fellow performers in Nelson gypsy swing band Django Schmango suggest he needs a new bluesy name to match his potential eyepatch; band member Pete Rainey joked he would need bigger music sheets.
‘‘It’s not the end of the world,’’ Straker said. ‘‘I’ve still got another eye.’’
So far, he found he could still do most things. His balance is fine, he can play guitar, and the vision in his good eye is already widening.
He is confident about driving again and even paragliding.
Straker said he had no anger about the accident, but wanted to raise awareness of the dangers. He hoped it helped ‘‘to prevent anyone else having to go through the same experience’’.
However, he was not convinced firework sales should be banned.
The informal evening at Cable Bay, north of Nelson city, was an annual event where 20 or 30 families gathered to have a barbecue and watch fireworks.
If anything he believed it was a better option than individual families doing their own thing because the firework-lighting area was roped off, there were fire extinguishers and water, and pets were not present.
‘‘Sometimes in life there are just accidents, even when all the best precautions are taken.’’
It’s been a rough few years for the family. Hannah Straker was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a mastectomy in 2016; last year a fire badly damaged their home in Nelson’s Brook Valley while they were overseas, and now this.
Hannah is hoping the old adage about bad luck coming in threes holds true.
‘‘Maybe we should skip 2019 and go straight to 2020,’’ Dean Straker said.