Reporter: Tara Brown
Producer: Stephen Taylor
Terry Vo is not just one of the nicest young men you'll ever meet, he's also one of the most courageous.
Four years ago, he was playing backyard basketball when a brick wall collapsed on top of him.
Terry's injuries were horrific.
Both his hands and left leg were completely severed.
But, in a world-first operation, a team of brilliant Perth surgeons re-attached his limbs.
Tara Brown first met Terry in the days following the surgery as he began his long recovery.
And, even then, his unstoppable spirit shone through. Terry's now 14 and, as you'll see, he's one very inspirational young man.
Full transcript:
STORY - TARA BROWN: Here is a tip - if Terry Vo ever challenges you to a video game car race, don't for one second think you might beat him because his hands are injured. The scars around his wrists are an ever-present reminder of the life-threatening trauma he has been through, but he can spin the steering wheel as well as any arcade game fanatic.
TERRY VO: These are like experience marks for me.
TARA BROWN: Do you ever get self-conscious or embarrassed by them?
TERRY VO: No, I don't get embarrassed. I like to show them off sometimes, too.
TARA BROWN: It's four years since both of Terry's hands were completely severed in a freakish accident and then reattached in an history-making operation. And what is truly remarkable is that today, there is nothing that Terry won't try or succeed at. He doesn't miss a beat on the keyboard, or a tap on the computer. Even the Rubik's Cube, that super annoying puzzle, is a breeze in this young man's dextrous hands.
TERRY VO: I feel like a normal person now. I have the same strength as before, or maybe even stronger.
TARA BROWN: Do you ever give up?
TERRY VO: Uh, no.
TARA BROWN: Never?
TERRY VO: Never.
TARA BROWN: Anything you can't do?
TERRY VO: Not that I can think of.
TARA BROWN: Up until Easter Saturday, March 26, 2005, Terry Vo was a normal, happy-go-lucky 10-year-old growing up in Perth. Then, in an awful instant, luck left him. It could have been anyone's backyard. Easter weekend, a child's birthday party, and the children gathered around to play a game of basketball. Terry Vo had the ball and as he's done in countless other games, decided to slam dunk it. He jumped and grabbed onto the basketball hoop, which was just there, just above the garage. But as he hung on, the brick wall it was attached to gave way.
TERRY VO: I was halfway jumping to slam dunk it and then I said "I shouldn't do this," but it was too late. I held onto it and then the accident happened. Like, it all fell down.
TARA BROWN: As Terry first described to me just a few days after the accident, everything happened in surreal slow motion. His hands and left foot were sliced off by the weight and jagged edges of the brick wall. And do you remember when you actually lost your hands and your foot? Do you remember that happening?
TERRY VO: It was pins and needles. It wasn't really hurting much. And I could still feel my hands while I was closing my eyes. When I opened my eyes, I saw that my hands were gone. And then I looked at my leg and it was chopped off.
TARA BROWN: Terry was rushed to the Princess Margaret Hospital for Children, with three of his limbs in an esky by his side. Not surprisingly, the hospital staff was also in shock when they heard the news. These were life-and-death moments for Terry Vo and while he was being stabilised, a surgical team of 19 doctors and nurses was racing to the operating theatre. Surgeon Rob Love was in charge.
DR ROB LOVE: So, that's his left foot, left hand and right hand. Just on his left foot, you'll see that the foot has actually come off about 7cm above the ankle joints.
TARA BROWN: Looking at these X-rays, Terry's hands and foot so perfectly intact yet so completely detached, you see what an enormous job the doctors faced.
DR ROB LOVE: If you look closely, the shoe is still on. That's the sole of the shoe and this is the strapping of the shoe, and you see that the bones have been shattered.
TARA BROWN: Three teams operated simultaneously, one on each limb. A combination of orthopaedic, micro- and plastic surgeons. Quite incredibly, it was only nine hours after his accident that Terry's hands and foot were back where they belonged.
DR ROB LOVE: We were all quite positive with the fact that all limbs were nice and pink.
TARA BROWN: For the first week of his recovery, everything went well, but then bad news - Terry's foot started to die and he was taken back to the operating theatre where it was amputated. That setback, though - losing his foot permanently - was, in fact, a blessing in disguise. When Dr Love came in and said we have a problem with your foot. How did you feel about that?
TERRY VO: Um, OK, because when they said they'll take my foot off and put a prosthesis on "You'll have your leg faster and you can run fast sooner," I said "Yeah, I would like to have that."
TARA BROWN: Today, four years on, you wouldn't know he's missing a leg. This is called C-walking, a kind of rap dance that's, apparently, all the rage with lots of young people today and Terry Vo is as good as any of them.
TERRY VO: Since I only got one leg, it encourages me to do it more and to be, like, on an equal level to other C-walkers which have two legs or maybe even higher than that, so yeah, it encourages me to do more.
TARA BROWN: C-walkers reckon one minute of this is the equivalent to running a 100m sprint, and while Terry makes it look easy, it has taken incredible amounts of intensive rehabilitation. The physio began just days after the operation. Back then, he had to teach his fingers to move just a fraction. But Terry never gave up and what always shone through was the extraordinary will power and good nature of this gentle 10-year-old.
TERRY VO: Now I know how brave I am and how positive and happy I am to be alive and to have all my hands back.
TARA BROWN: And to learn that about yourself, what's that like?
TERRY VO: Um, really exciting and pretty cool, yeah.
TARA BROWN: Six months after nearly dying in the unluckiest of accidents, and you wouldn't believe it - Terry Vo returned to the basketball court, completely unfazed by the circumstances. And that has been the most astounding part of his recovery - the complete lack of psychological scars. You said to me when we first met that you felt lucky, that it could have been much worse.
TERRY VO: I was lucky that my friends didn't get hurt and it didn't chop my head off.
DR ROB LOVE: I look up to his attitude to life and I think that we're all here for such a short time that to have a good attitude to life is extremely important.
TARA BROWN: Today, Terry Vo is just as mentally positive as ever, and his physical progress is so good, visits like this to surgeon Rob Love are a rarity.
DR ROB LOVE: Overall, I think Terry would be in the order of 80% of what he was pre-injury. Having said that, however, if you have a look at what he was able to do functionally back then and what you would expect him to do functionally now, as a teenager, he's able to do all of those things so you'd say "Well look, he's actually got 100% function."
TARA BROWN: Amazingly, Terry has now stopped doing any formal physio or rehabilitation because he doesn't need to, but everyday activities are a form of ongoing treatment.
NANCY BONFIGLIO: Terry approaches life with zest, so he does everything. He will not say "I can't do this," or "I can't do that." His attitude is "I'm going to give it a go."
TARA BROWN: Nancy Bonfiglio is Terry's year teacher at Perth's Servite College, and she says while the biggest compliment you can pay him is to treat him as just another one of the students his outlook on life has had a huge impact on all of his teachers and classmates.
NANCY BONFIGLIO: He just doesn't think about what he is dealing with, he just goes in and does it. He refuses to have a 'woe is me' mentality. To him, it's "I'm living life and I'm making the best of it."
TARA BROWN: At home, it hasn't been as easy for Terry's parents Trang and Tam, who continue to worry about their son's well-being, but arrival his little brother has helped divert attention from the negative to the positive, and Terry, as always, would rather look forward than back. What are your dreams and ambitions? What would you like to do?
TERRY VO: I would like to study medicine and get my grades to become a surgeon, a plastic surgeon, to care for other people and save other lives.
TARA BROWN: What do you think your patients might think to learn that their doctor once lost both his hands and now he is operating on them? What you think they might think of that?
TERRY VO: I hope they think of me as an inspiration.
TARA BROWN: You don't think they might be a bit nervous that you're operating on them?
TERRY VO: I hope not.
TARA BROWN: Knowing Terry Vo, it's a safe bet that if he says these will one day be the hands of a surgeon, they will be, but in the meantime, they're the hands of a drummer as enthusiastic and inspirational as ever.
TERRY VO: To be honest, I think that I am the luckiest person on earth. I'm pretty happy. On a scale of 1-10, I think I am an 11.
