In a frank and honest interview with the New Zealand Herald, Susan Wood talks about how that one fateful night changed everything.
Wood suffered a serious head injury after falling down some stairs in her home February 2015. She was later found by her children, unconscious and bleeding, and soon after rushed into hospital for emergency surgery.
Neurosurgeons set to work straight away to relieve the pressure on her swollen brain by cutting a 10cm square hole into her skull. Following the massive operation, Wood was unconscious for 10 days.
Without that immediate help, she says, she would have died.
Not that she remembers any of this. The trauma of the event is completely erased from her mind. In her ever-pragmatic way, she says she’s not upset by the fact that this memory is gone, and that it’s even quite good it’s erased.
“I’m quite pleased, she told the New Zealand Herald, I don’t spend time looking back, there’s really no point.”
But what she does remember was this: her recovery from brain surgery would mean having to re-learn to walk and talk, all over again.
The veteran broadcaster, who is no stranger to challenge, looks back on the incident with the kind of perspective that reveals a more determined, yet somehow more relaxed approach to her life.
“Your head comes off and it goes back on. Yes, I know. It’s not ideal. Then your hair starts to grow. You have to learn to read again, you have to learn to do everything. Walking, talking, the whole thing” Wood told the New Zealand Herald.
The worst of it though, she recounts, is the trauma her boys suffered. The mother of two says she wished her boys hadn’t had to go through this, and that’s something she says she’s having the most trouble getting past.
But, in true form, Susan Wood and her family are doing their best to move forward. While she’s still rebuilding her life and her career, Wood says everything has changed, but in the last 18 months, it’s her who has changed the most.
The near-death experience has allowed the 55 year-old to find happiness in the simple things. “I really like what I do, she says, I like who I see, what I read. I like the television I watch, the movies I go to. I go to bed very early and I get up very early, and I’m very happy with that, too.”
