Pape Souaré remembers wincing in disbelief as the car swerved out in front of him and, a split second later, the sickening crunch as his Mercedes G63 collided at speed with the central reservation. But it was only once the dust from the deployed airbags had settled and he slowly became aware of his surroundings, his ears ringing and senses numbed by shock, that the fear truly kicked in.
His right leg was trapped, the driver’s door of his mangled vehicle having folded itself inwards on impact and pinned him to his seat. Another commuter on the M4,
who had witnessed the crash that sunny afternoon a little over a year ago, had pulled over and was urging the injured footballer, as calmly as he could, to focus. “He kept saying my name, which surprised me. I didn’t understand how he knew my name,” Souaré recalls. “He was telling me: ‘Stay with me, stay with me.’ I was really listening to him, waiting and waiting, and I couldn’t move or do anything.
“At that moment you can do something stupid, trying to move your leg or trying to get out of the car, so I have to thank that stranger for talking to me, for telling me to wait and trust the ambulance people who were coming. But even when he was talking to me I was nervous. The door was on my leg and I didn’t know what was going on. The only thing I had in Africa growing up was my dream of being a footballer. I only have my legs to do that. I was worried. I was scared, thinking about my career.”
Souaré tells his story without even a grimace these days. He wants people to know what happened to him at a little after midday on Sunday 11 September last year, in part to thank those who have offered him support or words of encouragement over a draining 12 months. There were times,
Authentic Adidas Eddie Lack Womens Jersey particularly in the immediate aftermath of the crash, when fears abounded that the Senegalese might not even walk again, let alone resume a footballing career that has taken him from the Diambars academy in Saly to the Premier League via Lille. And yet, 373 days on from the horrific events on the motorway near Cranford, the left-back will return to the Crystal Palace first team for Tuesday’s League Cup third-round tie with Huddersfield Town. His recovery is the club’s good news story of the campaign.
The journey back has been painful at times, arduous throughout, and began with that stranger urging the wounded Souaré to sit still while the medical services arrived. The 27-year-old had been dropping a friend off at Heathrow airport and was only 10 minutes from his home when the accident occurred. Paramedics attended the scene, with firefighters forced to slice off the roof of the player’s car to remove him from the wreckage. A bike race had closed local roads, ruling out transportation by ambulance to the nearest trauma unit and meaning Souaré had to be airlifted to a hospital across the capital. “I remember them cutting the roof to get me out because the door was still on my leg, so they couldn’t lift me,” he says. “And I remember the air ambulance before they gave me something to stop the pain. By then I was starting to feel my leg.”
He would wake up in the Royal London hospital in Whitechapel to find Palace’s club doctor, Dr Zaf Iqbal, who had trained previously at the facility and had been contacted by paramedics, already a reassuring presence on the scene. “I had scans of the whole of my body, and was told I’d broken my jaw and my right thigh bone,”
http://www.authenticcarolinahurricanes.com/authentic-cam-ward-jersey says Souaré. The results of those assessments were actually positive, with no serious damage sustained to the hip bone or joint, even if it was now clear just how close he had come to a far grimmer prognosis. Had the impact been a couple of centimetres higher “it could have broken my spine and I would have been paralysed. I was told I was very lucky”.
It would be two days before he underwent surgery on his thigh, involving the insertion of a nail to hold the bone in place, and three before his jaw was wired by a maxillofacial trauma surgeon. His recovery was sustained by soft foods and drinks for several weeks. Souaré’s father was undergoing treatment for cancer in Paris and had been told he did not have long to live. His mother, back in Senegal, suffered a fall on the day after her son’s crash and broke her own leg.
The sense of helplessness ate away at the patient, who chose not to relay news of his accident to his parents. “There were a lot of things happening at that time. I was thinking about my career as a footballer,
Adidas Brett Hull Womens Jersey and people were telling me no one had come back to play at the top level from this kind of injury. It makes you think. But my dad was very sick. When I visited him [during rehabilitation late last year] and saw how he was, and I only had a broken leg, it showed I could not just give up.” Souaré Sr died in December.
Palace’s players and management did their best to support their stricken team-mate. Scott Dann and Damien Delaney were among the first to visit him in his hospital bed. “They were shocked when they saw me because my face was very swollen,” he says. “To see someone who they had been playing with one day, and then like this the next … it is crazy, but I want to thank them because they supported me all along. They lifted me, and I had a lot of messages from the fans.” The Everton midfielder Idrissa Gueye, a team-mate at Diambars and Lille, has been in regular contact checking on his progress. Souaré’s social media platforms have been awash with support.
A banner was unfurled in the Holmesdale End, reading “Keep strong Pape”, at the home victory over Stoke the following Sunday with similar messages of support on the big screen inside Selhurst Park. “Pape was incredibly brave,” says the manager at the time, Alan Pardew.
http://www.authenticdetroitredwings.com/authentic-brendan-shanahan-jersey “I remember visiting him in the hospital the following day and he still offered up that beaming smile of his as best he could through the broken jaw, even after everything that had happened. We all loved him at the club – he was so popular, a star on and off the field, and we missed him badly as a team and a group after the crash. To see him up, running and playing again now is testimony to his commitment and the hard work he and the medical staff put in. It’s wonderful to see him back.”
