AFTER a tragic hit and run completely changed his life, Jack Martindale has gone on to make a remarkable recovery from a brain injury. Now the 25-year-old has written a book about his experiences. He speaks to health reporter Kate Liptrot.

JACK Martindale was walking home from New Year celebrations with four friends when life as he knew it was changed forever.

As they walked through North London the group was hit by an out of control car. One friend died at the scene, and Jack and another were left in a comatose state - with only Jack ever regaining consciousness again.

Left with very severe head injuries Jack was given a score of three on the Glasgow Coma Index at hospital - the lowest at which you remain alive. As he stayed in his coma - from which it was doubted he would ever emerge - a surgeon painstakingly reconstructed his shattered face.

Three months later Jack slowly emerged from his coma into a confusing world where he learned the devastating news of what had happened to his friends, Carrie and Chelsea, and began to face up to his life changing injuries.

But he was determined to recover and nearly five years after the crash, the York-based writer has published his first book, Battling a Brain Injury: The Life that Jack Built, which he hopes will provide insight to others and help de-stigmatise brain injuries for the future.

"Having a brain injury is like an office filing cabinet being thrown upside down," Jack, who lives in Bishophill, said, "Everything is still there, it's just scattered and you have to re-order it and create pathways again. The scary thing about a brain injury is it doesn't heal, it doesn't repair, you have to find new ways of doing stuff.

"Writing was a way of helping me deal with the circumstances I found myself in and trying to make sense of my surroundings."

Now 25, Jack's appearance and his insightful and articulate reflections give little away of the life threatening injuries he suffered. Integral to the success of his recovery has been his writing - which became a cathartic process as well as a record of the accident, subsequent court cases, and his rehabilitation.

He can't believe it is nearly five years since the accident, in the early hours of January 1, 2010, when Jack and his close group of friends were returning home from a club in Brick Lane.

"We'd all had a good time from what I remember, the amnesia has affected that, but we had pictures to illustrate," Jack said, "I'm sure we had an amazing time.

"I know it's very rose tinted but my life was going really well at that point. I was going to graduate in the summer, I had great friends, academically, relationship-wise, everything was going very well."

They were hit by a speeding white Honda driven by Shamail Ali Syed who was later convicted of two counts of causing death by dangerous driving and sentenced to seven years in prison.

Police alerted Jack's parents to the accident and they made their way across London to the hospital becoming, unbeknownst to them, caught up in the traffic caused by the crash. "When they did get to the hospital my mum said her two greatest fears were that I had been paralysed or that I had something like this," Jack said, "The latter was confirmed.

"Your brain is you, it's your identity," he said, reflecting on the devastation of the accident.

As he remained in a coma, it was surgeon Simon Holmes who Jack said had the wisdom to repair his badly damaged face, putting titanium under his eye socket to reconstruct it. The consultant reasoned that whether or not Jack made a full recovery, that he looked like himself was important to his friends and family.

"There was a lot of doubt from staff as to whether that was a worthy thing to do," Jack said "It was clear from the beginning I was not going to die so they thought I would live but may be likely to spend the rest of my life in a care home.

"They thought, what's the point in mending his face if he is going to be like that?"

Gradually coming out of the coma in March, it was only two months later Jack started to realise the severity of what happened and that he would have to re-learn to walk and all the simple things he had taken for granted.

But he has been single minded in his determination. "I needed that drive," he said, "I don't know if it was delusional positivity but you need that. I wanted the best, I was adamant to get my life back on track."

Jack was transferred to a neurological rehabilitation unit and then to rehabilitation unit in Surrey where he stayed until summer 2011 - undergoing physio, speech therapy and psychology sessions.

Later Jack was able to return to the University of York where he graduated with a degree in English and Politics in July 2013. He went onto work at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in Clifton and is now devoting his time to writing, with his first book due to be published on Friday.

"I can carry a brain injury, rather than letting it carry me," Jack said, "Obviously I aspire for the book to be as successful as possible and it is what it is. I hope it will help people.

"I'm actually very exposed because the book was started so early, I'm very frank. Some of it I find it cringeworthy but if I altered it, it wouldn't be truthful. To take that away would diminish the book, because it would be false."

But he added that despite his positive attitude, it has been in the face of a devastating situation.

"There's no positive. Two young ladies died," Jack said. He said he has sometimes felt it has left him in limbo. "In some ways I felt I was lagging behind. My contemporaries had graduated and were going out getting jobs, moving and shaking, whereas I was stuck in rehabilitation.

"But at the same time you get this understanding a lot of people would never get in life. It's an awareness or a sense of self.

"I was so unlucky. So unlucky. So looking on the bright side isn't true, I was tremendously unlucky. So now I have made the best of it, now I wouldn't say I'm an unlucky person.

"Other times I think how far I have exceeded expectation. I don't believe in reincarnation but I feel had a renaissance in someway. Whatever happens now is a bonus as It came so close to not being so."

Now he hopes to continue his writing career, saying wryly, "It's not the way I invisaged becoming an author but I am one now I suppose."

- Battling a Brain Injury: The Life That Jack Built , costs £6.99 and is available to order on Amazon and will be released in bookshops on Friday. People in York have the chance to buy it at the launch event - which is open to the public - at 3 Apollo St in York at 7.30pm on Tuesday, November 4.