CALGARY — It’s truly a royal honour and one a Calgary man feels he’s earned, the Calgary Sun reported.
“I hate to say this, but I deserve it,” Brent Reid said of a commemorative Golden Jubilee Medal of Queen Elizabeth II he will receive next month.
“It’s been a long haul, but I made it.”
A former co-worker, engineer Darrel Sundholm, nominated him for the Queen Elizabeth II medal.
Today, the 43-year-old sports barely a sign of the day he nearly lost his life.
He can only recall “bright lights lit all around him,” when, on Sept. 12, 1999, the veteran CP rail conductor was struck by a train in the Alyth yards.
‘MIRACLE MAN’
Paramedics were hailed as heroes for a life-saving surgery by flashlights’ glow, while doctors put “the miracle man,” who had nearly every bone in his head smashed, back together with plates, screws and 180 stitches.
“If anybody says I have a screw loose, they’re probably right,” he said.
Two months after his release from hospital, Reid was doing safety lectures, and today he is pleased to know his former workplace has “become safer,” with staff required to wear fluorescent vests, and ear protectors –which prevented Reid from hearing the train — are now banned.
While cognitive function and the short-term memory he lost “has been found,” the self-confessed workaholic said recovery was lonely and coloured with longing to return to work .
Now Reid plans to lecture for the Southern Alberta Brain Injury Society and appreciates his second chance.