Surgeon rebuilt my leg — and life
Survivor of the Westminster terror attack praises hero medic for his extraordinary skill and compassion
THEY’RE the unsung health workers that our readers nominate for the Daily Mail’s Health Hero Awards. To launch the 2017 awards, one of the victims of the Westminster terror attacks, Stephen Lockwood, gave his first interview to nominate his champion: the surgeon Shehan Hettiaratchy who not only helped rebuild his shattered bones, but as this moving piece reveals, helped heal him mentally.
JNovember 7, 2017
ust before 2.40pm on March 22, stephen and Cara Lockwood made their way up the steps onto Westminster Bridge to hail a taxi. the couple, who live in Oxfordshire, had saved up for a weekend in London to celebrate Cara’s 40th birthday and they were walking on the south side of the bridge, towards the Houses of Parliament, when 52-year-old Khalid Masood launched his terror attack. He ploughed a hired 4x4 car into pedestrians at 76 mph, injuring 50 people.
Four bridge victims died, while a fifth, policeman Keith Palmer, was fatally stabbed before Masood was shot and killed.
this is the first time steve has spoken publicly about what happened. still deeply traumatised, he has not even talked in detail to Cara about that day because, more than seven months on, it remains too painful.
But he is determined now to champion the NHs heroes who looked after him, particularly trauma specialist and plastic surgeon shehan Hettiaratchy, who, he says, ‘not only saved my life but rebuilt it, and continues to look after both Cara and I to this day’.
steve recalls little of the moment the car hit him. ‘I remember a loud bang and pain running up the back of my kneecaps to my lower back, that’s about it,’ he says.
the impact sent steve flying: he landed 20 metres down the road, injuring the right side of his upper body and left side of his lower body.
His left leg was shattered below the knee, both bones were broken and the soft tissue ripped away down to the bone. He also had a fracture to his eye socket, a broken and splintered collar bone, five broken ribs, and his lower back was broken in two places. ‘I tried to get up, but obviously I couldn’t,’ he says.
‘then suddenly Cara was by my side.’ Pictures of Cara emerged, tenderly bending over steve, cradling his head and waiting for
paramedics, but steve recalls nothing after this point.
He was taken by ambulance to st Mary’s Hospital in Paddington. On that first day, Mr Hettiaratchy operated on steve’s left leg, inserting metal rods to stabilise it. the following day he wired his broken ribs.
On the third day, he began an intricate six-hour operation to reconstruct steve’s badly damaged left leg, taking skin and tissue from his right thigh to repair the hole in his left calf.
Mr Hettiaratchy, affectionately known as ‘Mr H’, has been dubbed ‘the magician’ for his plastic surgery skills. But for steve, it was the love and passion and pride he took in ‘making his patients whole again in body and mind’ which really stood out.
‘He’s an extraordinary man with an incredible skill,’ says steve. ‘He’d probably say he’s just doing his job; he did far more.’