‘People worship footballers and rock stars… my hero wears scrubs and is called Roger’

Chris, from Basingstoke, who works in IT, recalls “It was late—around half past ten—and after a great evening we jumped into a taxi to head back to our accommodation.”

A few minutes into the journey, everything changed.

A drunk driver in a large white van had blasted through a red light and slammed directly into the side of their cab. The impact was so violent the taxi spun three full times, hitting three pedestrians before crumpling into a lamp post.

“I remember nothing except waking up on the floor with bandages everywhere,” Chris says, with a woman telling me I’d been in an accident. Our cab had been T-boned by the van. Two other cars and 13 people in all were injured.”

Incredibly, the van driver who had two young children in the van, walked away with just scratches.

Ambulances and fire crew were on the scene in minutes. Chris was cut out of the car, bleeding heavily and rushed to one of Hungary’s top hospitals, where he fell into an induced coma. When he woke three days later, dazed and tied down to prevent him pulling out his ventilator, he was so disoriented he thought he’d been kidnapped.

“It sounds strange, but I genuinely considered breaking my thumb to escape. I hate being confined. Then the penny dropped when I saw a nurse.”

The list of injuries was devastating: a broken neck, major blood loss, multiple fractures and catastrophic damage to his right eye from flying glass from the windscreen with a shower of glass puncturing his eye. The eyelids had been mostly torn away. The iris (the coloured part of the eye) had completely disappeared, as had his retina. There was a large puncture wound to the front of the globe, leaving Chris with a gaping hole in his eye.

The news wasn’t good.

I had two operations in Hungary. The surgeons did their best, but the message was clear: “You may still lose the eye.”

Hearing that with my fiancée and my mum by my side was devastating.

“It was a lot for all of us,” he says. “My fiancée and my mum were there. I don’t remember much of that week.”

My fiancée, by some miracle, had lain down in the back seat just as the crash happened and was miraculously spared from the worst of the flying glass, though she still has bits embedded in her skin that need removing. Their friend tore the tendons in her hands holding onto her phone—her fingers don’t bend properly now.

After two emergency operations in Hungary, after around a week, he was stable enough to be flown home to the UK for a long, complex repair.

Key to Chris’s recovery, has been London Clinic Eye Centre Consultant Ophthalmic Surgeon, Roger Wong. Mr Wong specialises in vitreoretinal diseases and ocular trauma amongst many other eye conditions like macular diseases and complicated cataract surgery.

Mr Wong describes Chris’s injury with clinical honesty: “Chris’s eye was in ruins. Even the side of Chris’s head had been fractured by glass. The iris, the coloured part—that had gone. The retina had flopped off in the accident, so also gone. There was a massive hole in the front of the globe. In injuries like this, often the eye doesn’t survive.”

Using a combination of advanced surgical techniques, Mr Wong rebuilt the eye piece by piece fitting a new retina and artificial iris in Chris’s original blue-green shade. He also fitted a manmade acrylic lens suspended within the eye, using tiny supports, specially tailored for Chris.

Mr Wong said it was important for Chris to be able to enjoy a full life again. Since the accident, which happened in May 2023, Chris has faced multiple surgeries – two in Hungary and has more planned.

“To date, I’ve had around eight operations. I’ve still got more ahead, including work on the eyelid and another laser procedure. Considering everything, that feels like a miracle. My good eye does most of the work. But the injured one still gives me depth and spatial awareness” he said.

Physically, Chris healed relatively quickly. The fractures knitted in four months; the neck brace eventually came off. The double vision from a wrinkled retina eased.

Eye drops—once a phobia for Chris—became a daily ritual he now performs with surprising fondness: “They’re a link to the eye I almost didn’t get to keep.”

Mentally, the journey was harder.

“When it first happened, I focused on the damage. It’s human nature. But Roger always brought me back to the point: get the vision back. Get your life back.”

And he has.

The once seriously injured eye – which has undergone multiple surgeries – has been rebuilt piece by piece and as close a match to Chris’s other eye as it can be.

Chris is back behind the wheel—albeit more cautiously. He’s returned to the things that make him feel most alive, from football, bowling, to tennis and darts.

Ask Chris now and he’ll tell you he’s “lucky in an unlucky situation”. Lucky that insurance covered world-class care. Lucky that his fiancée wasn’t more seriously hurt. Lucky that one of the UK’s top surgeons took on his case. Lucky that he survived what could have been a fatal crash.

“A lot of people idolise footballer or rock stars,” Chris says. “But Roger is my hero. He made me feel safe every time I saw him.”

Mr Wong sees it slightly differently.

“For me,” the surgeon says, “the reward isn’t the challenge of the operation, yes that can be interesting and challenging but to get a human being back to where they need to be is the reward.”

The London Clinic Eye Centre is home to world-class ophthalmic consultants and surgeons, combining advanced diagnostics and cutting-edge treatments to provide high-quality eye care with the best possible outcomes.