Crash victim dies during risky surgery

A young man who was left paralysed in a serious accident last summer died this week following critical but risky surgery.

Andreas Adamou, a 22-year-old man from Limassol, died following unsuccessful surgery at Nicosia General Hospital on Thursday. He was initially involved in a serious accident last June, when he and three of his army buddies were returning after a boys’ night out.

According to an interview with local media last year, Adamou’s mother said her son did not initially want to go out that night but he changed his mind later when a friend called him back. The young men, reportedly days away from completing mandatory army service, had gone out to celebrate.

“I woke up in the morning and saw his bedroom door open. That was not normal. I started to get worried... I called his mobile and a police officer answered the phone,” Adamou’s mother said.

The man at the steering wheel was said to have been driving aggressively, recklessly overtaking cars for fun, while Adamou was sitting in the back. At one point, the driver lost control of the steering wheel and the car crashed into a telephone booth.

The driver suffered a concussion and died two months later in hospital, while Adamou suffered a spinal injury that instantly made him a quadriplegic. He was reportedly enrolled in physical rehabilitation programmes in the last eight months.

Adamou had a number of surgeries with doctors always giving him a 50-50 chance for survival. In many cases, he had heart attacks while on the operating room and had to be resuscitated. One time he was completely out for ten minutes and told his mom he had gone to a beautiful place.

“And they woke me up. Why did they need to wake me up? I didn’t want to come back,” Adamou said according to his mother.

But on Thursday, a critical surgery was proven to be fatal for the young man, when doctors performed surgery and Adamou died two days later.