He said: “The fact that I am still here, when the clinic told me that nine out of ten people who return after that happens are in the state of a vegetable.
“I must have a lucky star – that must be my mother, from up there – watching over me.
“Maybe people gave me a kick in the ass and said, ‘This is not your time’.
“It was a relatively major procedure. But the only question for the medical team was the state of the brain.”