The sound of a rumbling kettle haunts Andy Kennedy

Friday, 30 July 2021

Three times, doctors told them to turn off their son’s life support.

The tangle of tubes sticking out of his limbs and the bolt drilled into his brain weren’t helping Matt Kennedy feel anything.

A head-on collision with a texting driver near Hamilton put him in Waikato Hospital’s intensive care unit and left his parents facing an awful prospect.

“The doctors told us there would be nothing left of him, they told us he was going to be a vegetable,” Matt’s mum, Susan Kennedy, tells Stuff.

**READ MORE:

* Texting driver warned to stop by police just days before catastrophic crash

* Crash driver was texting when he crossed the centre line on State Highway 1 in Waikato

* After the crash: learning to live with a brain injury

**

But they could not flick the switch.

“We just were not going to accept it, that was not going to be the end until we had no choice,” she says.

Matt lingered at the edge of death for nearly four weeks.

‘I knew something was wrong’

The rumbling of a kettle haunts Andy Kennedy as the last time he remembers his son as he was before the crash.

“It was the first thing he always did before work, was make his morning cup of tea.

“That was the last time Matt was Matt.”

November 21, 2018 seemed like any other morning commute. Traffic was still light on State Highway 1 between Hamilton and Cambridge after 6am when Matt left for work.

But a car, travelling in the opposite direction, had been spotted by a witness swerving across the road.

That 24-year-old driver, Michael Wayne Eagle, had been pulled up 11 days before for texting and was issued with a ticket.

On the day of the crash, Eagle was still texting. Data from his phone showed a message sent at 6.38am and one received at 6.39am.

Eagle’s car drifted nearly 5 metres to the other side of the road, into Matt’s path.

On impact, Matt’s work van flipped in the air and landed, pummelling the passenger side of his vehicle.

He was suspended by his seatbelt inside the van, but the right side of his body was crushed.

Andy was travelling to work in the same direction, but left a bit later that morning, noticing an unusual tailback of traffic.

As he saw five bright orange road cones and the flashing blue lights of an empty police car, he was hit by a sense of dread.

“A feeling came over me that something was wrong.

“I almost went through the cones, but I decided, if he is in there I’ll be getting in the way, and if he isn’t in there, I'll be in the way too.”

Andy fought the urge to turn back to the crash site several times, but once he arrived at work he discovered Matt’s van was involved in the crash.

He soon knew his son was a status 1, in critical condition at Waikato Hospital. He did not know if he would survive.

“Once I got to the hospital and realised what happened to Matt, he was just laying there, my boy …

“My brain just stopped working, I couldn’t figure out what to do, nothing was going in, I did not know what was happening around me.”

The aftermath

Brain haemorrhaging, severe head trauma, a lacerated scalp, gums fallen out of his mouth, a fractured nasal bone, vertebrae and multiple other bones broken.

Even Matt doesn’t recognise himself when he looks at photos of his recovery: “I think, ‘bloody hell, is that really me?’” he tells Stuff.

The once 106-kilogram former front-row forward and gasfitter fell into a three-month coma following the crash, dropping to 80kg.

The other driver, Michael Eagle, a few beds down from Matt in Waikato Hospital, had his leg amputated.

Even after the first 12-hour operation, Matt was not out of the woods.

He stayed in Waikato Hospital’s intensive care unit for about six weeks. Early on, intracranial pressure was causing swelling in the brain, pressing against his skull.

He wore an ice blanket and his body was shivering, but his temperature kept rising and couldn’t be regulated.

Initially, there were few signs Matt could feel anything.

But a slight movement of his arm a month after the crash was “a Christmas present” for his parents.

“It was proof something in there was connecting to his brain,” says Andy.

More movement followed, then Matt was transferred to the Auckland Brain Injury unit in January 2019 to start intensive rehabilitation treatment.

Slowly, over months, he was re-learning reflexes, having physio treatments, even tossing a ball, then walking. Often, his eyes were open, but he was still in a semi-unconscious state.

“People think it’s like what it is on TV, when you bolt upright with your eyes open, and you’re suddenly out of a coma, it’s not like that at all.

“You emerge,” says Andy.

Each milestone was surprising, but none more than the first time Matt spoke again in February 2019.

“His first words to us were, ‘Good morning Mum, good morning Dad,’ and we both cried, we were feeling relief, joy, everything,” says Susan.

Stepping onto the field

Matt walks out on to the rugby pitch for his home club, Leamington, one crisp winter’s evening in July.

About two and a half years on from the crash, he’s walking, driving, and working two days a week and is out on the sidelines each Saturday, supporting his team.

He’ll never be able to play rugby again, though.

“When I come out here I just think of the good days of playing rugby. I loved it.”

Matt can clearly recall his life up to the age of 25 – including minute details of particular gas laying jobs around Hamilton, lyrics to favourite 1980s songs, and a blow-by-blow account of England’s winning play at the 2003 World Cup.

But the year surrounding the crash seems terminally plucked from his memory.

“I think I’ve come a long way, but then I also think I haven’t fully acknowledged I was in that crash.”

Initially, his short-term memory took a hammering: at ABI, he would be wheeled out of his room, then forget where he was when he returned; he would eat a meal, only to ask minutes later what he’d eaten.

And though he remembered his sisters quickly, he struggled to recognise his parents, particularly his mum, for months.

Matt did not return home permanently until about 10 months after the crash, following more treatment in a Bupa clinic.

Now, the 28-year-old can’t socialise with friends like he once used to, and the ability to complete and remember household tasks is still patchy, causing occasional bursts of frustration: “Like anyone, when you know you’ve done something before, but you can’t do it now, it's frustrating.”

The effects of the traumatic brain injury and harrowing recovery has taken a psychological toll on every family member.

His parents have had to adjust to a very different future – where once they imagined retiring and Matt taking care of them, they are now looking after their once fully independent son at home.

“Matt is about 80 to 85 per cent back to who he was.

“He’s not fully Matt, and he’ll never be the same Matt, but he’s still loving and kind,” says Susan.

The medics have told Matt's family his recovery – from the edge of death to working and functioning – is a “miracle”, but it also points to Matt’s determination, and the family and rehabilitation support around him.

But it's an irreparable trauma the family should never have had to go through, they say, and the problem of texting drivers shows no sign of letting up.

Recently Stuff reported on calls to beef up penalties for cellphone use while driving, after the Government increased the fine to $150 in April.

But the family regularly see texting drivers on the road, urging people to pull over, or turn off the attention-grabbing screen.

“How important was that text? It’s ruined two families’ lives,” says Andy.

In October 2020, Judge Noel Cocurullo sentenced Eagle, charged with dangerous driving causing injury, to six months’ home detention, disqualified him from driving for two years and six months, and ordered him to pay $10,000 in emotional harm reparation to Matt.

In court, Eagle read out an apology he had written to his victims, saying he couldn’t imagine the pain and fear they were suffering.

That’s hard for the family to swallow, their lives forever changed by one avoidable choice.

As for Matt, he says he doesn’t hold a grudge against Eagle, but, at times, he does feel angry.

“You’ve got the good and the bad. The bad is the bad, and what happened, happened.

“But I look at the good, at the kindness of my family and friends around me, and think that’s bloody awesome.”