Toby Sexton, halfback for the Canterbury Bulldogs, considers his father Tony to be his hero.
He never misses a Sexton game and is always the first to embrace his son, win or lose.
However, early this year, Sexton worried he would never see his father again.
Tony nearly lost an arm to a chainsaw and lost two and a half litres of blood in a working accident on the Gold Coast.
“He got three-quarters the way through a hedge and he kind of slipped on his platform … with a hedger and cut through his arm, cut through a vein and cut through an artery,” Sexton was quoted as saying by 9News.
It was a life-or-death situation, with Sexton’s younger brother Matt, who is learning to be a paramedic, fortunately working with their father at the time.
“There were multiple times my little brother was saying he thought dad was going, which is something I can’t get my head around to this day, what my little brother must’ve been going through,” Sexton was quoted as saying.
Meanwhile, Sexton was a plane journey away from his new home after being traded from the Gold Coast Titans to the Bulldogs, so a phone call from his mother left him feeling helpless.
“Mum called me at the time and said ‘don’t stress but I’m not sure whether or not dad’s going to make it’.
“I booked the first flight I could to the Gold Coast because I was losing it, there’s no other way to put it.”
“I was in tears and in shock.” I had no idea what to do or if he was going to make it.”
The plane ride itself was terrifying.
“It was terrifying. “Normally, I watch a movie on the plane ride, but this time I just sat there looking at photos of dad and thinking, ‘this can’t be the last moment,'” he explained.
Tony has made a near-complete recovery months after the incident that nearly killed him.
“For it to work out the way it did and dad now only being in a brace a couple month on, to be back to working full time again, it’s honestly remarkable,” Sexton went on to say.
“It has definitely given me a whole new perspective on life and made me appreciate everything that much more.”
“He’s a hero to me.” “I do everything for him.”
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