'I want him back so bad': Kerri-Anne's anguish
Kerri-Anne Kennerley's husband of 31 years will likely never walk again, the beloved TV star has revealed in an emotional interview.
The TV presenter has described the ordeal she and John have been through since the businessman fell from a verandah at a golf club in March.
John fractured his C3 and C4 vertebrae in the freak accident in Coffs Harbour, NSW, which left him as an 'incomplete quadriplegic'.
He can still only breathe through a ventilator which means he can only mouth words to his wife.
Initially after his surgery he could only blink in order to spell out words with the help of an alphabet chart - the first of which was 'paraplegic?'
"He was worried, he was so worried."
Kerri-Anne broke down in an interview with Sunday Night's Mike Willesee as she described the loss she felt seeing her husband motionless and unable to speak.
"When I get angry I get results and we will get a great result."
"We've just got to figure it out," Kerr-Anne said through tears.
"A whole chunk of me just doesn't exist anymore. There's, just a whole, big chunk that he used to fill," she said.
"It's like I'm inside my head screaming that it's not real, but it is. I can't be anything but strong for him, because this is a man in pain."
When Kerri-Anne rushed to John's side immediately after the accident he told her that he couldn’t feel anything before losing consciousness.
The 75-year-old was rushed to hospital and later airlifted to Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital for surgery.
"The doctor came out and said 'look, we do this all the time but, you know why, don’t you just go and have a few words to him'," Kerri-Anne said.
"'Say goodbye' is what he said."
"It was touch and go that he wasn’t going to be there, and that was horrendous enough to go through that,"
Although John has no feeling in his arms and legs, he is making progress and can feel his wife's touch which he described, with great difficulty, as an out of body experience.
"It is a battle. But I want him back so bad... I want him, to actually be as happy and have the creativity that he's always loved and enjoyed."
"You don't know if he'll ever be able to walk. I don't know if he'll ever be able to hold my hand. Um, some of that will come back in bits and pieces, but nobody knows."
Doctors have said his prognosis will be clear in the next 12 months as John regains what movement he can.
"They use those terms 'incomplete quadriplegic' you're just going, 'oh my god that is like to me worst case scenario."
“I sort of wake up every day thinking, ‘what a shocker nightmare that was," she says
“It's not. It unfortunately is not a nightmare.”
Kerri-Anne said retirement held many adventure plans for the couple, plans that would now be put on hold.
"The next several years of our lives, I wanted to be the very, very best. We've always talked about that. We were going to do all sorts of things."
"I vacillate between being really resentful and pretty goddamn angry to okay fine… Calm it down. We've got to get to the next step."
She is still intent on getting the train-enthusiast on board the Orient Express, but in the short term she just wants her husband home.
"Getting him back home — that will be the best thing since sliced bread. But that's way in the future."
