‘I must be the only person in the world who can say they have been shot three times in the head by a 44 magnum and survived,’ says Lottie Pollak, simply.
Its the stuff that Hollywood movies are made of - but even then, people who are shot in the head don’t always survive.
Lottie, 42, who lives in London holds down a top job too - as the market research manager for a large international company.
She is the last person you would expect to have such a tale to tell - that the three shots that were fired at her from less than five feet away left her with such a gaping hole in her face that doctors didn’t think she would make it through the night.
She lost 13 pints of blood whilst she was at death’s door, and the gaping hole that was left, left her unable to talk her eat.
But now surgeons have rebuilt her face to such a remarkable degree, that she is now able to eat her favourite meal of steak and mash potato and hold a full conversation with anyone.
Its a tale that began when Lottie met her partner Charlotte on an internet chatroom site back in the summer of 2002.
Lottie was living in London and Charlotte, who was then married to husband Richard was living in the USA.
‘Charlotte was still technically married to Richard, but their relationship had ended,’ explained Lottie. ‘When I met Charlotte on the chatroom site we hit it off straight away. We were friends for a year before we finally became a couple.’
Charlotte, 36, who works for a technology company, came over to live with Lottie in London, but in September 2003, she had to return to the states for important medical treatment.
She flew back to see her surgeon, and a couple of days before New Year’s Eve that year, Lottie flew to the USA to pick her up and bring her home.
‘We had just called a cab to take us to the airport and were really excited about flying on New Years Eve, and having champagne as we crossed over the dateline. But as the cab was coming up the road at 12 noon, we decided to let the dogs out for a last run,’ said Lottie. ‘We had just let them back into the house when we heard a noise, and Richard jumped out of the cellar door, and he was brandishing a 44 magnum gun.
‘It seemed so surreal, it was difficult to take in. He didn’t say anything, and in a split second I just pushed Charlotte to one side, back into the open garage, and as I did so the shots rang out.
‘I don’t remember much about being shot. Afterwards Charlotte told me that as I’d looked over my shoulder one bullet had taken out the left side of my top jaw completely and shattered the bottom jaw too.
‘The second one went across the back of my head and fractured my skull, and the third one grazed my right cheekbone.
‘The only thought I had was to push Charlotte one way, and try and go the other way myself, then he wouldn’t know who to go to. I pushed Charlotte so hard, the force knocked her to the ground.
‘A fourth bullet actually went up through the ceiling and into a neighbours upstairs adjoining room and grazed the back of a teenage boy who was working at his computer.’
‘I didn’t feel any pain as I lay on the floor afterwards - my body had gone into shock. The cab driver had just pulled up and Charlotte screamed at him to call an ambulance, which was there within minutes.’
Lottie was rushed to a nearby hospital where she was rushed straight in for emergency surgery. Doctors told Charlotte that they didn’t think she would survive.
‘She actually had to say goodbye to me as they wheeled me past as they didn’t think she would see me again,’ said Lottie. ‘She asked the surgeon what my chances were and she said to her that she had never seen anyone shot in the head three times with a magnum and survive.
‘I don’t remember anything for ten days and thats when I woke up. I had been in surgery for 13 hours when they brought me in, and luckily they were able to stabilise me. I had blood transfusions as I had lost so much blood.
‘I wasn’t shocked when I woke up - I was still on so many drugs, but they gave me a board to write on as I couldn’t speak as my jaw had been blown away, and I wrote on it ‘where’s Charlotte,’ so I must have remembered some of what had happened.’
‘We had shared drinks with Richard over the previous 12 months,’ said Lottie. ‘And he had given no indication that he was unhappy or upset with our relationship. It had been very civilised, and he appeared to have accepted that we were together.
‘I just don’t know what made him lose it that day and jump out of the cellar with the gun. We will never know.’
Lottie was allowed to fly home to London three weeks after her surgery, and was cared for by the Royal Free Hospital in London.
‘On the flight home people just kept staring at my face. The bandages had been taken off, but there was still a gaping hole in the middle of my face where my mouth should have been,’ said Lottie.
‘I couldn’t talk and I couldn’t eat, so I had a feeding tube fitted into my stomach. When the feeding tube was taken out, I had to liquidise everything - even hamburgers and chicken. If I went out to a restaurant, I would choose something off the menu and ask them to liquidise it.’
In October the following year, Lottie flew back to the USA to have reconstruction surgery.
‘Luckily the surgeons when they did the first emergency operation , had folded what was left of my upper lip and had sewn back into the top of my mouth, so when they came to do the resconstructive surgery, they could use that.
‘They also took full thickness tissue grafts from my arm in order to cover the three inch by two inch hole in my face. ‘
The operation was a success, and Lottie remained in the USA until January 2005, when she had her second reconstructive operation. This time, during the eight hour operation. the surgeons opened her scalp from ear to ear, and took round circles of bone from her skull in order to reconstruct her eye socket and cheekbone.
‘There was ateam of about 30 surgeons in my first operation, as it was so specialised,’ said Lottie. ‘There was a surgeon who had flown in from Holland especially just to reconstruction a small area between my lip and my nose.’
Lottie flew back to London in May 2005, where she had to have extensive facial physiotherapy to get her newly built face working properly.
‘I have a special jaw exercisor which I have to bite down onto and it strengthens my jaw,’ she explained. ‘It forces my mouth open and I have to do it twice a day. If I haven’t done it, then my speech starts to slip a little because I can’t open my mouth as wide. If I’m doing a presentation at work, then I have to make sure I do the excercises before I give the talk.’
Lottie does get lots of stares from people in the street and on public transport, and she says that explaining her story often shocks anyone who asks.
‘I don’t mind explaining to people. Lots of people don’t dare ask, and I actually have to end up comforting those people who I tell the story too, as they are so shocked they don’t know how to react.
‘It is a lot better now I’ve had my reconstruction surgery as people can understand what I’m saying. Before the surgery Charlotte and I would go into the supermarket and at the checkout I would hand over the money, and the cashier would hand the change back to Charlotte, as they just didn’t know how to react to me.
‘But now I’ve had the reconstruction its a lot easier. ‘
Last summer Lottie had another operation to laser a hole into her ear canal to allow her to hear properly. And this summer she had to go into hospital after suffering a suspected infection in her face.
‘I have to be very careful that it doesn’t get infected in the bone,’ she says. ‘Reconstructing my face was difficult enough, but if I got an infection and surgeons had to deconstruct it to get at the infection - that would be even more difficult.
‘I’m just so pleased that they have done such a good job on my face. I never imagined that after being shot three times in the face by a magnum I would be able to eat and talk again.
‘I was just lucky that the bullet didn’t get my carotid artery or my brain stem, as I would have been dead or brain damaged. And I still have my sight too, which I feel very lucky about.
‘Charlotte is very protective over me too. She does feel guilty, but I’ve never blamed her. No-one could have ever known what he was going to do. He was the one who got the gun, and he alone decided to shoot it.
‘I’m just relieved that he wasn’t a very good shot.
‘I do have an issue with guns and I don’t want the wrong message to get across to people. I don’t want people to think that if you get shot in the head then you will survive.
‘Guns are dangerous and no-one must ever forget that. Nobody else could ever be as lucky as me. I must be the only person in the world who has ever been shot three times in the head and survived.’
Lottie is an ambassador for the Healing Foundation, an organisation for research into pioneering surgical and psychological healing techniques.
For more information, visit their website at www.healingfoundation.org (IMP - PLEASE LEAVE IN)