Demons superstar Christian Petracca has opened up on his “traumatic” recovery from a season-ending internal injury likened to a “car accident” victim including having gruesome open surgery.
Petracca was forced to go under the knife after being diagnosed with a Grade 5 lacerated spleen, four broken ribs and a punctured lung sustained during Melbourne’s King’s Birthday loss to Collingwood, prematurely ending the 28-year old’s 2024 campaign.
Speaking publicly for the first time since the brutal setback, Petracca, who’d just returned home from hospital including spending time in intensive care, detailed his distressing experience.
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“It’s been pretty tough, to be honest … I don’t wish this is on my worst enemy,” Petracca said on Nova 100’s Jase & Lauren.
“I don’t think we all really understood the severity of it. We got an initial scan around 8pm or 8pm at night. I don’t know what happened,
I think 15 minutes later, one of the doctors noticed my haemoglobin was dropping severely and my blood levels were dropping.
“So we did another scan and that’s when they started to noticed four cracked ribs, the Grade 5 spleen and a punctured lung. So it went from being a 4/10 to basically a 10/10, it was the equivalent of a car accident.
“So it seemed pretty full on. I had to go straight into surgery at 2am. Open surgery, I wasn’t under anaesthetic because of my blood level was so low.
“They numbed the area and put me under a gas mask. But those gas masks only do so much. You can still feel it … it was pretty traumatic.”
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Petracca said Darcy Moore, who accidentally caused the injury by kneeing him in the midsection during a contest, messaged Petracca “four of four times” cheekily acknowledging he “owed him dinner.”
The gun midfielder got emotional when reflecting on how much “inspirational” partner Bella has helped him throughout the process.
He admitted the prospect of returning to the field right now was “raw” and that he even struggled to watch footy over the weekend.
“Oh, bloody oath at the moment,” Petracca said when asked if he had doubts about returning to the field.
“It’s still raw for me, it’s still seven days (ago). I watched a little bit of footy on the weekend and I had to turn it off because even just a simple tackle, you put yourself back in the situation that you were.
“So of course at the moment, it’s quite raw. But no doubt with the recovery process and everything that I’ll be able to tick off and my mindset, I’ll be able to get back to the player I was.
“At the moment, it’s just a lot of self-doubt, which is fine, that’s just the human feeling of course.”