Yet nearly four years on, that is the unlikely adjective Jak himself reaches for as he reflects on the slow, agonising and only partial recovery he has made from the devastating injuries he suffered that day. He is referring not simply to the luck of surviving the collision itself, but more so the remarkable series of events that came in its aftermath. - which saw his life saved twice over by medics at the Royal Preston. Speaking to the Lancashire Post about his experience - to mark the tenth anniversary of the opening of the hospital’s major trauma centre - Jak recalls the moment that everything changed for him and his then girlfriend, now wife, Charlotte. The couple had been heading home to Haslingden from Charlotte's graduation ceremony when the car in which they were travelling as back seat passengers - with Charlotte’s parents in the front - was confronted by the horrific sight of a seven-and-a-half tonne HGV hurtling straight towards them. “The road we were on bends off to the right and this lorry basically came round the corner and lost control and went head-on into us - [it] knocked us off the road. “Charlotte broke her back in four places, had two collapsed lungs and eight broken ribs, lost her spleen, her liver was severed and [she had] a colostomy bag [fitted] because her bowel was severed as well. “Her mum had a double stroke because her femur was snapped in half and a part of the bone went into her brain. Her Dad had a bleed on the brain and broke his back, too,” Jak remembers. All four occupants of the vehicle were ferried more than 22 miles from the scene of the wreckage on Grane Road in Haslingden to the Royal Presto - the designated major trauma facility for the whole of Lancashire and South Cumbria - to be treated for injuries that were the very definition of traumatic. While his partner was taken straight to intensive care because of the severity of her condition, Jak found himself on the 10-bed major trauma ward in need of the specialist emergency treatment dispensed by the team there. While he initially appeared to be slightly less badly injured than his future wife, Jak suffered a sudden deterioration after a week in hospital. “I started feeling really ill, my temperature went up to 41 degrees - and within half an hour I was on the operating table. “They found out I was in septic shock and had a one-litre abscess in my stomach from where my bowel had given way. The abscess had burst - they drained it and managed to get rid of it, but my other organs were shutting down, because they had gangrene on them. “They had to get a colostomy bag on me, too.” So far so difficult to see how any of Jak's unfolding nightmare could be characterised as anything remotely lucky. However, following one bout of surgery, he was given the news that a separate and silent health problem had been stalking him before the crash - and one which posed just as big a threat to his life in the long run. Doctors had discovered that the then 23-year-old was suffering from an extremely rare form of cancer affecting his appendix - and Jak’s operation meant that the tumour was uncovered at an unusually early stage. “I was told it’s undetectable until it’s [progressed to] stage four. There is no test for it [and] there are no symptoms until people come in with appendicitis - and, by that time, it has probably spread to your bowel, kidneys and liver. “I’d probably have been dead in three years, they said, if I hadn't had that accident - so I was lucky.” A crash that could have claimed Jak’s life had ultimately saved it. But he has nevertheless been left with injuries - including to his back - that have given him a very different future to the one he had mapped out. He had to quit his physically demanding job as a screen printer and is awaiting another operation - his sixth - this time for a lumbar hernia which came after he lifted his wife’s wheelchair. The problem has its roots in the weaknesses caused by the accident - while a disc in his back is being interfered with by his sciatic nerve, leaving him in “severe pain”. So - lucky? “I’ll take it,” he says, without a moment’s hesitation. However, he and Charlotte - now aged 27 and 28, respectively, and the proud parents of an eight-month-old daughter - are necessarily living a life that looks little like the one on which they were poised to embark as they drove back from Charlotte’s graduation in November 2018. She had been preparing to begin to work as a teacher, but was never able to do so - and now needs a daily care package and practical support from her husband. But both of them eventually had their colostomies reversed and whatever the individual and collective challenges still faced by the couple - who got married at the end of last month - Jak credits the fact that they have any future at all to the major trauma team at the Royal Preston. “They were brilliant in every way, all of them - we’d definitely be dead without them.” ‘I WAS A HANDFUL FOR THE NURSES’ Jak and Charlotte have so far had 11 operations between them - including lengthy, complex surgery such as spinal reconstruction. The couple spent five weeks in hospital following their head-on crash, with Charlotte being cared for on the major trauma ward for 18 days and Jak for seven. The extent of their injuries meant that they have been regular returnees to the Royal Preston ever since and Jak says that what he calls the “after care” he and his now wife received has been crucial in helping them recover to the extent that they have. Kieran Goode, a nurse practitioner at the major trauma centre, told the Post that the facility acts as practical point of contact to help its former patients navigate their ongoing care - while also providing the emotional support that many people do not even realise they will need until they return home to find familiar surroundings, but upended lives. “It’s then that the reality hits - physically, emotionally and mentally. Sometimes they will have lost their job and the means of supporting their family - and that affects the dynamic [in the household]. “Some of them are fine, but we find a lot of patients are suffering when they go home. Roughly six weeks after discharge is when we phone them, because that’s when they have processed everything. “But we give them our details, so they can ring us anytime. So they might go home one day and the next they’ll ring saying they just can't cope - and you just talk them through that it’s normal [to feel like that],” Kieran explains. The bond between staff, patients and their worried families is one that is forged during the darkest days after they are first admitted - and for Jak and Charlotte, it is one which has endured with one nurse who has since moved on from the hospital. “She is now one of our friends, even though I was a bit of a handful [as a patient], I think,” Jak recalls. “I was on morphine at first, but I had quite an adverse reaction to it, because I was hallucinating and having bad dreams - it was horrible.” In spite of their ongoing day-to-day difficulties, Charlotte and Jak have been moved to raise funds for the major trauma unit. They also have nothing but praise for the colostomy and colorectal teams that helped them through their often torturous recovery to the point where Charlotte was able to defy the odds and give birth late last year. The new mum even echoes the L-word used by her husband - with the couple clearly determined to ensure that the positives drown out the unimaginable pain and suffering they have experienced. “We will always remind our little girl how lucky we all were to be looked after by the trauma team at the Royal Preston and hope that she will one day show the kindness towards others that they showed to us,” Charlotte says. “We have come to accept that our lives will never be as they were. But we remain hopeful that we can still make lovely memories as a family - and we thank all of the staff at the Royal Preston for allowing us all to be able to share a future together”. ‘IT’S THE SIMPLE THINGS THAT DO THE DAMAGE’ Major trauma nurse practitioner Kieran Goode has seen it all during his five years at the facility that treats Lancashire and South Cumbria’s most seriously injured patients. So it is no longer the severity of individual injuries that shocks him, but rather the simplicity of the seemingly innocuous scenarios that bring patients to the door. “When you [imagine] major trauma, you think of the car accidents or being hit by a bus - but the majority [of cases] are a fall from standing. That's things like tripping on a kerb or an elderly person having a dizzy spell and banging [their] head. “With something like a bicycle versus a car, you expect [that] to give your head a certain amount of injury. But a fall from standing can be devastating. “And [in all cases] it’s also how the simple things can lead to [a bad] outcome - deciding to ride a bike to work instead of taking the bus or car, for instance.” The major trauma centre was established in the summer of 2012, giving round-the-clock access to skilled specialists and emergency theatres for those in need of them most. A dedicated 10-bed major trauma ward followed in 2015, drawing together a multi-disciplinary team - including surgeons, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, dieticians and psychologists - to look after patients’ immediate needs to ensure their survival and then to set them on the road to recovery. More than 11,500 patients have passed through the centre over the past decade, with the numbers increasing each year.