Life after crime 

Photographs

The night our life changed...

My name is Brendi and I live in Durban, South Africa. The reason I am posting this article is to see if there are other people out there who also went through a similar experience and how they coped with it.

Two years ago I was living a normal life, with my husband, Mario and son. We had a house & car and we both had a good job. We were not rich, but we had a good life. All this changed in one night as my husband was attacked by three men who stole his cell phone. They stabbed him in the neck; ear as well as in his head. The knife went through his scull and penetrated his brain by 4 cm. When we found him next to the road, I must say, I thought he was dead. After we couldn’t get hold of an Ambulance we loaded him into a car and rushed him to hospital. They worked on him for about 3 hours before I could see him. The next day a brain scan revealed the horror of the accident. He had a lot of blood on his brain as well as two false aneurysms. He underwent 3 brain operations, the first one was almost 10 hours in theatre, the second to drain blood and put in a drain and the third one to put in a shunt. When he finally came around after being in a coma for about 2 weeks, he didn’t know who I was or anybody for that matter. He was in nappies. I was told that he would be a vegetable forever.

This story has a happy ending as, two years later Marius is starting to recover to the extent where I believe we can actually start building a future again. This is only because of allot of prayer and faith & believing that he will get better, despite what the doctors say. I also feel that I am getting my husband back. The only bad thing is that because he couldn’t work, and I had to literally change nappies and nurse him back to life, this had a severe impact on our finances. We lost our house & mostly everything. I started working again about a year ago to stay alive. It is very hard when ones life changes literally overnight.

Is there anybody out there who had a similar experience? What did you do? How did you put your life back together again? How can one recover financially?

Thanks
brendi@adstation.co.za