THE MVA 2008

In 2008 Carl was touring the USA as lead singer of  The Guess Who but there were personal issues troubling Carl. The band gave him two weeks off to travel to Australia. He left a recording studio in Melbourne, turned off a freeway onto a dark country road. He was stressed, tired and lost. For a brief few minutes Carl forgot, in Australia they drive on the other side of the road, the left. Thirty years of driving on the right hand side in North America was his "auto-pilot" go to. He collided head on at high speed into an oncoming driver who fortunately was in a large 4WD, Carl was in a small rental car. The other driver attempted to avoid Carl's rental car coming head on and his car went over the top of Carl's vehicle crushing the rental car. Miraculously the first few people on the scene had medical training and aided the other driver and Carl. Within minutes medical help was called in. The other driver was thrown from his vehicle and suffered lacerations to his head, an injured back and a broken ankle. It took an hour and forty-five minutes to extract Carl who was barely clinging to life. This incredible work was carried out by volunteers from the Ballan CFA (Country Fire Association) led by Ian Ireland.  Ian radioed in local paramedics and specialists from Melbourne. The police at the scene asked paramedics "what are his chances?" the answer came: "no hope for this guy". Yet the dedicated teams and volunteers stuck to their mission to do their very best to save Carl. Broken, yet somehow still alive, Carl was airlifted to the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne where surgical teams worked through the night; first a 17 hour round of surgery then a 19 hour round of operations to save his life and limbs. The prognosis was that if Carl awoke from his coma he would likely be quadriplegic, have brain damage, possibly be blind and may still lose his left leg. Now he was surviving deep in his coma . The rest was up to Carl...