Devoted mother’s long journey of hope
Jeffreys Bay property agent marvels at her son’s recovery after accident
FIVE years have passed since the call came that her son had been critically injured when a tree fell on him – five years that have left Jeffreys Bay rental agent Anchen Loots with the unshakeable belief that “where there is life, there always is hope”.
Her son, Kowie, remembers little of the first three years that passed after the accident, but since he first regained consciousness in March 2009, he has gone from being a desperately ill man to an accomplished bowls player.
This week, Anchen shared what she called her “journey of hope” as she refused to give up while she nursed her son back to health. “I am telling this story to tell other people who are standing at a hospital bed today that they must never stop hoping. They must let us know when they start to lose faith and Kowie and I will come and tell them our story.”
At the time of the accident in January 2009, Kowie owned a timber business.
He said this week: “All I remember is that we were working in Wolseley. I asked my workers to . . . cut down a row of pine trees. I was busy with my cellphone and had turned my back on the trees. From what people told me later, one of the pine trees fell on a tree that was rotten, and that tree fell on my head.”
He had a hole in his skull measuring 5x5cm, and his brain was protruding from the hole. Three neck vertebrae were broken. His workers carried him out of the forest and took him to the closest hospital, in Ceres, from where he was transferred to the Panorama Medi-Clinic in Durbanville.
It was then that Anchen got the call at her home in Aston Bay. “We just packed and left,” she said. “I opened my Bible and God gave me a text assuring me that there was an angel with Kowie.”
She said when two of Kowie’s friends visited later and placed a small ceramic angel on his life-support machines, this Bible text was confirmed to her. “I just prayed all the way to Cape Town.”
When she spoke to the doctors who were going to perform emergency surgery on Kowie, the news was not good. “[One] doctor told me that Kowie suffered terrible injuries.” Kowie underwent the surgery. The news remained bad.
“One of the nurses said he was going to die. He was the sickest person in the whole hospital.” Anchen spent the next few days praying and hoping her son’s brain would not swell to an extent that would require him to undergo another operation. She kept vigil at her son’s bedside, day and night. “As soon as he heard my voice he would hold out his hand. I would take it and he would be calm and go to sleep.”
On January 25, Kowie opened his eyes for a while, but remained in a coma for eight weeks. Anchen surrounded his bed with family photographs. Another operation was required to repair his broken neck. Week after week Anchen spent hours at her son’s bedside. She made soup for him. “Even if I could only get a few drops into his mouth. It helped.”
At the right time on Kowie’s road to recovery, medical aid company Discovery arrived on the scene.
“Discovery said that they were doing research on brain injury, and asked if we would agree to move Kowie to the Intercare Rehabilitation Centre in Cape Town.”
By March 2009 Kowie could sit up straight and stand for a while.
“When it was his daughter Cherize’s birthday, I phoned her and gave Kowie the phone. “Hello,” he said. “I love you. You must come visit me. “He then gave me the phone. We cried.” But just when things were looking up for the Loots family, they were dealt another devastating blow. Kowie’s father, Murto, had to be rushed to hospital when he suffered a heart attack.
“His heart just gave in because of the stress,” Anchen said.
At the end of March, five years ago, Kowie was discharged from hospital and moved back into the house he then shared with his fiancee. “The first thing he did when he came home was to look for his cellphone, to pick up his business from where he left it,” she said.
Two years ago, Kowie’s memory was restored fully. For his devoted mother, his recovery was a roller-coaster of highs and lows, but her belief that where there is life there is hope, prevailed.
In April 2009, Anchen and Murto took Kowie to Panorama Medi-Clinic, to talk to his doctors and nurses. “One of the doctors said to me that he would never, ever tell a patient’s family again that there was no hope of recovery,” Anchen said.
Kowie is surrounded by his family, has a new love in his life, works, and plays bowls with his parents. He competed in national paraplegic bowls tournaments in 2012 and 2013, and placed second and fourth respectively.
He walks with a limp and has limited movement in his left arm and shoulder.
Anchen marvels at his recovery. “We always knew he was stubborn, and he just never gave up.”