Tony Lam Heung-ho, 47, is the managing director of Molecular Biology Ltd, a biotech firm that specialises in the modern production of traditional Chinese medicine. He says he has had several close encounters with death.
I would say I have been close to death a few times. The first time, I fell asleep at the wheel. It was in 1981 in San Francisco; I missed my flight and had to drive. There was a big car crash but I escaped serious injury - quite a miracle.
But the more serious crash was in 1983. I was driving in Central, near Murray Building. My car smashed into concrete barriers and my head slammed into the front windscreen. I have no idea whether I was conscious or not. I had a very strange feeling in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, like I was watching the whole incident from outside my body.
I heard people pushing me into the emergency ward. I felt I was calmly observing things from above. Perhaps I was deluded. I could hear doctors speaking around me. When they gave me an injection, the out-of-body experience ended. It was only later that I felt the pain.
I had a severe headache, like my head was about to explode, several hours after the accident. A week after the crash, my sense of time was completely distorted. I would mix up all my appointments, but it was a temporary effect. Eventually, I recovered.
Then I had a stroke in 2000 at a friend's place. I was about to leave and stood up, but my back gave way and I just collapsed. My neck fell back and forth, and couldn't stay in the right position. I knew something was wrong. I was taken to the hospital and had a brain scan. Doctors found a blood clot the size of a golf ball in the left side of my brain, so it affected mainly the right side of my body. There was a surgery team waiting to see if I would pass out, in which case they would operate. But I stayed alert so there was no operation.
