The Resilience Project: Bashed firefighter lives full life again

Friday, 17 July 2020

Martinborough firefighter Peter Fisher works at Mitre 10 Mega in Masterton in the mornings.

This story is part of The Resilience Project, a Stuff and Sunday Star-Times investigation into how people have survived life shocks.

“You can’t be bitter all your life- you’re only going to screw yourself up,” says Peter Fisher.

Fisher, a Martinborough firefighter, has been living with a brain injury for eight years, ever since he was attacked by a man who had gatecrashed a party next door. He’d been asked to intervene.

Fisher needed facial reconstruction and suffered a stroke and the brain injury. In court his injuries were compared to a plane crash victim’s. He spent 78 days in hospital and rehabilitation before returning home. The weeks after the assault were hard, and a big part of that was the damage that had been done to his face.

But Fisher is philosophical and hopes people can find peace with challenges that are thrown at them. Leaving the past in the past is the way to go, he reckons. He hopes if people can learn from his experience they might find more resilience in their own lives.

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Fisher in his Martinborough home a year after the assault.

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His thinking is this: “I know there are people worse off than me. You’ve got to make the best of what God has chucked at you.”

Plastic surgeon Dr Swee Tan operated on Fisher after the assault.

One of New Zealand’s most accomplished plastic surgeons, Swee Tan, performed wonders on Fisher whose appearance barely shows any sign of the past trauma. Fisher is grateful: “I like to thank everyone that’s ever given me a hand over the years.”

The 56-year-old is down to part-time work now, four hours in the morning at Masterton’s Mitre 10 Mega, and still volunteers for the local fire brigade, now in an operational duty if he’s not too tired.

Part of the process of successfully piecing his life back together again was learning to understand his limits. Any more than half a day of work and he’d be falling asleep on his drive home .

When he gets home he takes an hour-and-a-half nap and he’s good until around 8.30-9pm when it’s back to bed.

Nonetheless, he said if he was faced with the same request for help that put him in harm’s way eight years ago, he wouldn’t hesitate.

“I’d do the same thing again.”