A WOMBWELL taxi driver needed one side of his head 'rebuilding' with metal after he plunged 30ft down a cliff and landed head first on rocks.
Eddie McNally, 49, of Highfield Court, Wombwell, slipped and fell from the top of an old quarry in Wombwell wood on January 19. The left side of his face took the impact of the fall.
Now, three months on, he still cannot remember anything about that day. His next memory is waking up in intensive care four days later.
Eddie, a former soldier, needed an eight hour operation to reconstruct his eye socket, cheekbone, jaw and forehead - most of the left side of his face.
His eye is still visibly sunken and he is unable to move most of that side of his face, but he has made a remarkable recovery and is continuing to improve all the time.
He said: "It's seven separate pieces of metal I've got joining the bone back together. Some of them are tiny but some are about two inches.
"I can't really move that side of my face so I have to hold my cheek up to talk properly. I'm doing exercises all the time to move it, and in 12 months they can look at what further surgery they might be able to do."
Eddie says he feels very lucky he is still alive but says when he talks about it, he feels as though he is talking about it happening to somebody else.
He said: "People keep telling me how serious it was but it's hard to believe it because I just can't remember anything about it.
"All I know is when I came out of hospital I looked terrible. I'm a thousand times better now, but it will still be a very long time before I'm fully recovered."
Eddie's brain is still swollen. He lost memory and is still forgetful. He lost sight in his eye at first but it is returning because the optical nerve was not damaged. Eddie's memory is also improving, but he does not know if he will ever remember anything about the accident.
He was cycling through the wood with son Joe, 11, and had got off his bike when he fell from the cliff.
Joe called 999, and a passer-by Nichola Thrall, 30, of Rutland Place, Wombwell, arrived on the scene and helped him look after his dad.
