A Bickley man has abseiled with the surgeon who re-built his skull with a metal plate after a fungal brain infection left him hours from death. Danny Elphick tells reporter HELOISE WOOD about his hopes for forming a Hole in the Head Gang.

‘I SAW the mirror quickly out of the corner of my eye and tried not to look back because it was so awful.’

Danny Elphick, has described the moment he first saw his reflection after doctors had cut away a chunk of his skull.

On Sunday (July 7) the 43-year-old was able to repay a promise he had made on his “death bed” to the surgeon, Robert Bentley, who rebuilt his head with a metal plate – he bought him a beer.

Earlier that day two had abseiled with Mr Elphick’s friends and family raising thousands of pounds for research into the groundbreaking procedure which gave him his “life back”.

The construction company managing director’s ordeal began in April 2011 when he  started getting headaches at work.

Mr Elphick, of Aspen Close, Bickley, said:  “I never normally get headaches unless I’ve had too many beers the night before.

“I went home and was sick and got flu symptoms and went to the doctors a few times and they said I had flu then spent two weeks in bed.

“Eventually my wife, Sarah, insisted I went to the A&E at the Princess Royal University Hospital in Farnborough and I got a young doctor who knew something was wrong and gave me a CT scan.”

“I told Sarah she should go home to our son but she hadn’t even got off the hospital grounds when they called her up and told her they were sending me in an ambulance to intensive care at Kings College Hospital in Denmark Hill.”

Mr Elphick’s brain had turned poisonous due to a rare but potentially deadly brain condition, subdural empyema.

“It had started as a sinus infection, crept through the back of my eye and went through into my brain. I can’t begin to describe what the pain was like.

“Four hours later I was signing my life away.

“They had to cut about a third of my skull away because my brain was swelling, drilled up my nose and cut in between my eyes and cut my head open and then took out a bit of my skull.”

The moment of truth came a few weeks after Mr Elphick had first been admitted to King’s.

He said: “I remember the first time I looked into the mirror in the ward. I was going to the toilet and went to have a shave.

"I saw the mirror quickly out of the corner of my eye and tried not to look back because it was so awful.

“A few months later I was sent home and had antibiotics shots three times a day and I had to swallow around 25 pills each morning.

“I had to be very careful and it really focuses your mind when you know you know you haven’t got a skull. In 11 months I didn’t knock it once.

“But then you get used to it a bit and I just wore a hat.”

However almost a year after Mr Elphick had part of his skull removed, he had a pioneering operation.

He said: “They put a metal plate in my head and it utterly changed my life. I was back to work in 10 days.

“The reason we’re raising money is in some areas, the NHS says the procedure to fit metal plates is purely cosmetic.

“It isn’t nice going round with a hole in your head but it’s more than cosmetic - the operation changed me back to the man I was."

Mr Elphick describes King’s craniofacial curgeon and director of trauma Robert Bentley, who rebuilt his skull, as “amazing”.

He said: “I was able to repay a promise I made to him when I was basically on my deathbed in hospital, I said, if I get through this, I will buy you a beer which I did on Sunday.

“We’ve raised thousands through the fundraising including the abseil so far and we’re hoping to raise about £100,000 over the next four years which would cover about a quarter of my care. 

“I don’t like heights but I wasn’t worried because I had one of the world’s top surgeons was abseiling with me.

“I met a lady who had just had the same thing and we said we’d start a Hole in the Head Gang for people like us.

“What I went through has made me more passionate about doing things for other people.”

Mr Elphick also has a lot to thank his wife for.

He said: “If she had not nagged me to go to A&E I would not be here today – I’m not only still here but I’m back at work. It has been an amazing transformation.”

For more information, visit Danny's Justgiving page.