"I Woke Up with Half My Skull Missing After a Sprint to the Tube – I Felt Like Megamind and Could Even Touch My Brain!"

A MAN who suffered a horror fall while rushing to get the tube has told how he woke up after the accident to discover “half his head” missing.

Alastair Wallace, then 46, was wearing “smooth soled shoes” when he tripped and fell down the stairs at Circus station in January 2019 as he tried to get on the Victoria line.

Then 46-year-old Alastair Wallace was rushing to get the Victoria Line when he tripped and fell down the stairsCredit: SWNS Shocking photos show Alastair after his accident when a portion of his skull was removedCredit: SWNS

Rushed to hospital, medics removed a portion of his skull and discovered he had suffered a subarachnoid haemorrhage — a rare caused by bleeding on the surface of the brain.

Figures suggest up to 30 per cent of subarachnoid haemorrhage sufferers die before even reaching the hospital. A further 25 per cent die within 24 hours.

Put in an induced coma, Alastair, a leadership consultant, woke up days later at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington surrounded by “ashen and worried” looking friends and family.

Recalling the horrifying ordeal, the now 52-year-old, said: “They explained that I’d had an accident and I remember asking for a mirror.

“They said ‘that’s not a very good idea’ and I remember getting quite agitated, saying ‘no, I want to see’.

“You can see what I looked like in that photograph – they’d taken off the whole of the right side of my skull, I’d had a craniectomy at that point.

“The whole of that half of my head – you could touch my brain essentially.

“It was skin and and then brain underneath – it was completely soft there. It was total shock, .”

After eight days in hospital, Alastair was discharged and told that his new 3D-printed polyether ether ketone thermoplastic skull to protect his brain, would arrive in six weeks.

In the meantime, he was instructed to wear a BMX bike helmet every time he stood up to protect his head.

Pictured, Alastair Wallace after his fallCredit: SWNS Doctors diagnosed him with a subarachnoid haemorrhage, a rare type of strokeCredit: SWNS

On , three weeks after being discharged, he even went on a fourth date, which he’d missed while in hospital, with his now-fiancée Alessandro.

Alastair said: “I had my crash helmet on, and both my parents – who are both divorced – were here, so it was awkward.

“But it had a happy ending – we got engaged last year.”

Determined not to let the situation get the better of him, Alastair decided to continue on with his life despite the condition.

He said: “I remember going to a gallery in London with my helmet on and they said ‘sir, you’ll need to take your helmet off because it’s a security issue’.

“I took it off, they took one look at me and said ‘no, it’s alright, you can put it back on again’.

“They obviously didn’t want to put their punters off – the same thing happened in a local Italian restaurant too.

“It was obviously quite a dramatic look.”

After receiving his new skull, Alastair was able to finally go out without a helmet.

Months later, however, he suffered a “microscopic leak” of cerebrospinal fluid, that saw him look “a bit like Megamind”.

Now, Alistair is able to live a mostly-normal lifeCredit: SWNS

A cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leak occurs when the dura mater – the outer membrane covering the brain and spinal cord – tears, causing clear, watery fluid to escape

Alastair said: “It was squishy – like when you have water in a balloon.

“You could press it, it was horrible, it was really, really unpleasant and it looked extremely unpleasant.”

After nine months spent wearing an elasticated cap to compress his implant and a procedure to drain the fluid with a needle every four weeks, Alastair was eventually fitted with a VP shunt to divert the fluid to be harmlessly absorbed.

Since then, he’s been able to live a mostly-normal life, though he has been left with some long-term side effects.

He had to teach himself to smell again by smelling four essential oils for 30 minutes a day – lemon, clove, rose, and eucalyptus – after the nerves connected to his sense of smell and taste were sheared.

And he can no longer raise his right eyebrow after a nerve was severed by accident during an operation to correct bulging on his face.

Since then, he’s had a brow lift and on the to keep his face looking symmetrical.

Alastair has since given a TEDx talk on his experience .

He said: “Going for a fourth date with half your head missing doesn’t necessarily mean that there isn’t a happy ending – people can see past appearances.

Pictured, Alastair Wallace before his fallCredit: SWNS

“I’m a Samaritan’s volunteer in my spare time and have been for 11 years, so I always knew the of being truly listened to.

“It’s not until you feel it from the other side – other people listening to me when I was feeling like my face was a mess, I was mutilated, and I was never going to look the same way again.

“Being on the flip side of that was a really humbling experience.

“You don’t realise how important those small moments are.

“Help comes from the most unexpected places, my friends and family were brilliant.

“Day to day, help came from the most unusual places, like my friends who came from the gym for a cup of tea or took me for a walk when I had my crash helmet on.

“It was moments like that that really made a difference, not grand gestures from people.”