Wilmington pupil Calder Grant picks up top GCSE six months after alleged hit-and-run crash left him in coma
12:28, 22 August 2019
updated: 11:44, 04 November 2019
A teenager who was put into a coma in February after being knocked down in an alleged hit-and-run has battled back to pick up top GCSE results.
Calder Grant, 16, from Swanley Village, had been on a night hike with his scout group on February 15 this year, when he was mown down by a car on Whitehorse Road in Meopham.
The driver is accused of leaving the scene, while Calder was taken to hospital where he was put into an induced coma in intensive care, and the injured teenager then spent a month in hospital before being released.
But despite having missed crucial school time - not to mention having to cope with ongoing memory loss and the physical trauma of multiple injuries - Calder fought back to complete his GCSEs and picked up his results today at Wilmington Grammar School for Boys.
"I'm very happy," he said after picking up the results this morning, wearing an Everlast T-shirt - apt attire for someone who's been fighting his way back to health for six months.
"I got four 9s, two 8s, three 7s and a 5 - the 5 was for German and I walked out of that exam saying I was going to fail."
His laid back attitude belies a traumatic few months which began when his life was changed back in February.
"I was on a scouting activity - hiking at night," he recalled.
"It was supposed to be a three day thing and I lasted an hour-and-a-half. A car hit me in Meopham.
"I remember walking and then nothing until six days after the accident.
"I woke up six days later in hospital - I didn't even speak at first, I could only type on my iPad with my eyes half shut."
And while Calder doesn't remember it, the first thing he asked about was his school work - yet it would be a tough fight to get back to a state where he could study, and he only got out of a hospital three weeks after waking up.
"I couldn't decipher what was real for a while, but one day I had a couple of medical tests and that triggered something in my head - I thought 'I'm having medical tests so it must be real'.
"It was like it just switched and I was back to how I am now - I left hospital the following Thursday."
Nevertheless he needed ongoing treatment, which is set to continue with visits to the neurologist and planned surgery on a knee ligament which snapped in the crash.
"I couldn't decipher what was real for a while, but one day I had a couple of medical tests and that triggered something in my head." - Calder Grant
"I missed subjects and I had to work a lot harder to revise," he added. "I still get some bad short term memory loss so I really had to get the stuff into my head.
"I felt I was in a good place to get good grades before, and then to be pushed back was hard."
But after everything Calder's experienced, the usual emotional stress of results day was no trauma at all.
"I wasn't nervous like a lot of the others," he said. "I knew what help I had been getting and I knew I'd been given a (6th form) place."
A man has been summonsed to appear at Medway Magistrates' Court on Tuesday, September 3, where he will face charges of failing to stop at the scene of an accident, failing to report an accident, and perverting the course of justice.
