‘After van struck me, I lost myself... I was no longer Sheena’

SHE was at the height of her career when she was run over and severely injured by a police van.

Now 20 years on, former broadcaster Sheena McDonald has described her recovery and dealing with a traumatic brain injury.

Miss McDonald, 65, and her husband, BBC reporter Allan Little, have revealed their incredible story in a new book, saying it has brought them closer together.

On February 26, 1999, just before midnight, Miss McDonald was knocked down by the van, which was driving on the wrong side of the road in islington, London, near the couple’s home.

Aged 44 at the time, the journalist, from Dunfermline, Fife, was left in a coma, with severe head injuries and damage to her face.

Mr Little, 60, who was then working as the BBC’s chief correspondent in Moscow, arrived at the hospital shortly after the incident but could only recognise her from her feet and hairline.

Miss McDonald said: ‘The damage to my brain had been caused by my head being hit, forcing my brain to ricochet inside my skull.

‘For a while i lost myself. i was no longer Sheena.’

Four days after the devastating collision, Miss McDonald finally regained consciousness, but was left suffering from amnesia and could not recall the previous 15 years of her life.

She did not recognise her partner of five years, Mr Little, and could not remember what she had looked like, or that she had been a wellknown broadcaster for Channel 4.

Having forgotten how to swallow, she was kept alive via a nasal feeding tube and lost 30lb.

Her devoted partner dropped everything to nurse her and moved them both back home to their native Scotland.

Mr Little, from Stranraer, Wigtownshire, took six months off work to look after her, as he could not leave her alone in the house for a minute in case she fell or choked.

He wrote in the book: ‘A barrier had descended cutting Sheena and i off from our past life. i didn’t know it yet, but there would be no going back to the way things had been.

‘You were entering a new country with an unfamiliar language and an unknown map.’ Miss McDonald described his care and determination as crucial to her recovery, saying: ‘This remarkable man stood by me and helped me to piece my battered brain together.’

Their story has been published in rebuilding Life After Brain injury: Dream-talk, which they co-wrote with Miss McDonald’s clinical neuro-psychologist Gail robinson, in the hope it can help others in a similar predicament.