Bodybuilder’s remarkable comeback

Mar 13 2008 by Ben Glaze, South Wales Echo

A MR Universe hopeful is back bodybuilding after almost severing his arm in a freak accident.

Blood pumped from 38-year-old Lee Callaghan’s arm after he fell into a glass door, two months before he was due to compete in the event.

But a remarkable recovery means he is ready to enter this year’s Mr Wales competition.

Five-times champion Lee, of Merthyr Tydfil, said today: “I felt like giving up, but now I’m fitter than ever.”

The accident happened when he tripped over a pair of jeans as he collected clothes from the washing line, plunged into a glass door and severed the main artery in his right arm.

Doctors told girlfriend Leanne Perks he might die and he lost six pints of blood as medics fought to save his limb.

The father of two said: “I’d just come back from the gym and as I brought the washing in I got tangled in my jeans that I’d just pulled off the line.

“I fell straight through the glass door. The flesh was cut clean in half.”

Lee, who runs Muscleheadz gym, drew on training with the Territorial Army and made a tourniquet from a cloth before paramedics arrived.

He was taken to Prince Charles Hospital, Merthyr Tydfil, before undergoing an emergency operation at Swansea’s Morriston Hospital.

Ex-doorman Lee spent nine months in a cast and lost four and a half stone as he plunged into depression.

He said: “Bodybuilding is my life. My confidence hit an all-time low.

“I didn’t think I I’d work again, never mind train.”

But he worked on his fitness and underwent a gruelling training regime following the accident in June 2006.

It included squeezing tennis balls, rolling Plasticine in his hand and using a tin of beans as a dumbbell.

The effort paid off and Lee returned to the gym.

Today, he has a visible scar and cannot feel anything in his lower arm.

But he has returned to his pre-accident weight of 15 and a half stone.

Lee said: “I’ve got something to prove now.

“I’m competing in this year’s Mr Wales again.

“If I’m placed third I go into the Britain competition, then if I make top six I can compete to be Mr Universe. I’m determined to do it.”

ben.glaze@mediawales.co.uk