Martin’s story: Gaining a new lease on life after nearly losing a foot
The award-winning career of well-known foodie Martin Bosley was abruptly brought to a halt by serious injury. His mental health suffered but he now feels like his ordeal may have been a blessing in disguise.
It’s a beautiful summer’s day in Greytown. The sun is shining, as it usually does at this time of year in the picturesque Wairarapa village.
It’s the last place you’d expect your life to be changed in an instant by a traumatic accident.
But that’s what happens to famed chef Martin Bosley, one of the greats of our culinary scene. Somehow in this tranquil setting, he nearly loses a foot. And comes just as close to losing his life.
Luckily, ACC is on hand to get him back on his feet and ease any financial concerns. But it will be a long road to recovery for a man not used to being out of action.
He’d spent 35 years excelling in just about every ‘foodie’ role you can imagine – chef, restaurateur, fish-monger, columnist, author – and being bestowed with every major food award New Zealand has to offer along the way.
“The thing I really struggled with was that, prior to the accident, I was always busy – it was just boom, boom, boom. Restaurants, selling fish, writing – the phone would go and I’d be like, ‘Hell yeah, that’s a great idea, let’s do it’,” he says.
“Then all of a sudden I lost all agency over my own life, just like that. Literally in a split second one sunny Saturday afternoon my life changed. And I didn’t cope with it at all, I refused to accept it for months.
“I’d never had any sort of mental health issues but I was in a real dark, dark place. Without the amazing support of ACC, I would’ve been stuffed – I don’t know what I would’ve done.”
‘I should’ve had a hmmm’
Martin had managed to avoid serious injury despite nearly four decades working in the bustling, hazardous environment of commercial kitchens. Sharp knives, boiling water, red-hot stovetops and ovens – there’s potential danger at almost every turn.
But, in the end, all it took was a rickety old ladder in the backyard to bring his renowned career crashing to a halt.
He had inherited the ‘bloody thing’ after buying a cute, one-bedroom cottage on the main drag in Greytown – a food and wine haven over the hill from Wellington, the city in which Martin grew up and forged much of his impressive reputation.
He knew the ladder now belonged on the top of a junk pile at the tip but his hedges needed a trim so he decided to use it anyway.
“It was dumb because I had a brand new one sitting in my storage shed in Wellington,” he says.
“I kept thinking, ‘I’ll take that home and get rid of this damn other one’, but I just didn’t get round to it. My neighbour Sue from out the back took one look and said,’ Are you going to be okay on that?’ I was like, ‘Yeh, I’ll be fine, I’m just doing the top of the hedges, it won’t be a problem’.”
But Martin should have heeded Sue’s wise words, not to mention the worrying creaks coming from the worn-out aluminium as it took his body weight.
“The next thing I knew, I was standing on it and I could just hear it going. I was like, ‘Shoot, I need to get off this thing’,” he recalls of that fateful moment.
“The feet at the bottom of the ladder just gave way, the safety straps popped out and it pancaked, taking me down with it. My leg broke over the upright of the ladder in several places and then the step acted like a guillotine, it just came straight down through my foot. If I wasn’t wearing a pair of leather gardening boots, it probably would’ve taken the foot right off.”
‘The neighbours saved my life’
Martin was home alone and had left his phone inside on the kitchen bench.
In shock, he managed to untangle himself from the wreckage of the ladder and, thinking he had only sprained his ankle, tried to stand up. But he realised something was seriously wrong when he couldn’t get to his feet.
By now, blood was starting to pour through his boot from the deep wound in his foot and the precarious nature of his situation suddenly hit home.
“That’s when I had a really good look and thought, ‘Oh no, this doesn’t look good’. I didn’t know what to do so I just sat on the dirt and yelled for help.”
Fortunately, Sue was watering her garden and heard Martin’s desperate cries from over the fence. She rang for an ambulance but it had to come from Masterton, about half an hour away.
Having severed one of the main arteries in his ankle, Martin was in real danger of losing his life. But another stroke of luck and more heroic neighbourly actions combined to save him.
“There’s a young couple next door with three kids, one of them heard me and went inside to tell their mum,” Martin explains.
“Her husband is in the volunteer fire brigade and, luckily, he’d just done his first aid training that week. So he rushed over, grabbed some tea towels, stopped the bleeding and made a tourniquet. The ambulance guys said he probably saved my life.”
Facing up to an uncertain future
Martin’s life was now safe but the fate of his left foot was less certain.
“I went straight into an operating theatre in hospital and they said, ‘Look, we’re going to do everything we can to save your foot but you might wake up and find we’ve amputated it’,” he says.
“So when I woke up I didn’t want to look, I just couldn’t face it. I was wiggling my toes but I was like, ‘Is that really my toes, or just the phantom limb thing?’ I didn’t know until the nurse came in and I asked her if I still had a foot, thankfully she said yes.”
The threat of losing his foot reared its ugly head on several other occasions during his recovery, much to the consternation of Martin, who was still struggling to come to terms with the extent of his injuries.
“I was like, ‘You guys have got the wrong guy, all I did was fall off a ladder and break my leg. I’ve seen people with broken legs, you just put it in a cast and a few weeks later you take the cast off and they’re walking around’,” he remembers saying to the doctors.
“But they said, ‘No, what you’ve done is a bit more than that, it’s quite dramatic’.”
Martin doing some Origami artwork, which he started during his recovery to keep himself occupied.
ACC lends a helping hand
At the time of the accident, Martin was no longer in charge of a restaurant. But he was running his own seafood supply business, as well as juggling catering for weddings, writing food columns and making public appearances as a food expert.
His say-yes-to-everything mentality made hitting pause on that hectic life hard for him to deal with.
“It was probably a good couple of months before I finally accepted the reality that I was just going to have to accept my situation and start doing what everybody around me was telling me to do – the surgeons, doctors and then ACC,” he says.
“ACC have just been amazing, I’ve been blown away by it all. They’ve been more proactive than me in many respects, I didn’t even know what was available and they just suggested it all. It all just happens and it’s world-class treatment – I haven’t wanted for anything.”
As well as taking care of his surgeries, nursing, physio and all other medical costs, we’ve helped Martin out with weekly financial compensation, occupational therapy, counselling, home modifications and equipment.
A walking frame, perch-chair, shower stool, knee-scooter and exercise bike have all aided his recovery, while we also provided a cleaner to help keep his cottage nice and tidy.
“I’ve got friends in America who can’t believe the level of support I’ve had,” he says.
“Over there, if you had to have all that surgery and spend a few weeks in hospital, you’d be coming out with a massive bill. It’s crazy that you can get all that support here and there’s no bill at the end.”
‘Bozzy’s Angels’ come to the rescue
Playing a massive role in Martin’s recovery has been a five-strong support team, consisting of his mother Brenda, ACC recovery partner Melissa Frederiksen, occupational therapist Lyndsay Boyd, physio Barbara Parreno and counsellor Tereska Armstrong.
“I like to call them ‘Bozzy’s Angels’ because they’ve just been so good to me and I don’t know how I would’ve gotten through this without them,” he says.
“When you have an accident like that, they describe the trauma as making the filing drawers in your brain explode out everywhere. You basically have to re-train your brain and put everything back in place, so I was just exhausted all the time.
“I’d never had anxiety before but all of a sudden I just didn’t want to be around people. If I was with more than a few people I’d start freaking out, breaking into a cold sweat. I’d be waving people away with my crutches like a mad man,” he chuckles.
Martin was initially skeptical when counselling was suggested to him.
‘I’ve done a lot of crying’
That wasn’t the only time Martin found himself wiping away the tears.
Knowing he was keen to start feeling useful again, occupational therapist Lyndsay suggested popping into Pinocchio – a local restaurant owned by friends of Martin – and helping out in the kitchen.
“I just asked them to let me cut some potatoes or something, so I was just there with a board and a knife,” he explains.
“I thought I was going to be absolutely fine but within about 10 minutes I was a wreck. So I went out into the carpark and was in floods of tears again.
“I’d had 35 years in kitchens so I was like, ‘I know this environment, how come I can’t cope with it?’ And Lyndsay said, ‘This is what I’m talking about, there’s more to it than just going straight back in’.
“I’ve done a lot of crying, which is not really normal for me.”
ACC smooths the path back to work
It’s now over a year since Martin had the accident and he is in the final stages of a return-to-work programme, which has allowed him to gradually get back to his busy life at an appropriate pace.
It’s been a lengthy road due to the nature of his physical injuries – which included compound fractures of the tibia, fibula and talus – and the mental impact of going through such a traumatic experience.
With a desire to be busy etched into his character, Martin says the guidance of ACC has been vital in making sure he was ready for each step.
“I would’ve been like a bull in a china shop otherwise,” he admits.
“I have to file my timesheet with ACC every week so they can see what my hours are as I slowly creep back up. Without that, I would’ve been boom or bust. You just think you’re bullet proof and who knows what sort of damage I could’ve done.”
Taking a new approach to life
There has been a silver lining for Martin in going through one of the worst experiences of his life.
“Weirdly, while I lost so much of my life and spent last year in a really dark place, I feel like I’ve actually got my life back in a way,” he says.
“I have so much more control now than I did before. I used to say yes to everything and I’ve discovered that I was hard-wired to do that to make people happy.”
For example, one of his first thoughts after having the accident was that he was supposed to be catering for a wedding in the coming days.
“So I’m lying there with my leg all mangled and I’m already thinking about someone else, it was crazy,” he says.
“That’s just not happening now – I’ve realised that saying no is a really powerful thing. Sometimes if you’re doing nothing then that’s exactly what you should be doing.”
Martin says his accident is a further example of the need to be mindful of your wellbeing and trust your feelings.
“I had every opportunity not to use that ladder, I could easily have got off it or never used it. But I didn’t listen to the advice of other people or myself, I didn’t follow my instincts,” he says.
“Before, I was just rushing from one thing to another and not looking after myself – I won’t be doing that now.”
Gardening injuries – By the numbers:
- There were nearly 69,000 new claims for gardening injuries in New Zealand last year, which came at a cost of over $79 million to help people recover
- In 2021, the cost of gardening injuries was the highest in five years, it has increased by over $25 million since 2017
- The top five gardening injuries last year were soft tissues injuries, laceration/puncture wound/sting, foreign body in orifice/eye, fracture/dislocation and burns
- The top five parts of the body to receive a gardening injury are back/spine, shoulder, finger/thumb, arm and neck/back of head
- There were nearly 20,000 claims for back/spine injuries in the garden last year
- In 2021, women were slightly more likely to hurt themselves in the garden than men, with 35,513 women (52 percent) suffering gardening injuries compared to 33,294 men (48 percent)
