Chris Cairns is propped up in his hospital bed in Canberra but still has cricket on his mind. He wants to know about England and their Ashes preparations, specifically whether Ben Stokes will be fit for Brisbane.

Then again, chat about hamstring strains and broken fingers feels rather trivial when Cairns is facing up to the possibility that he will spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.

“I don’t know if I will ever walk again and I have made my peace with that,” he says. “It is now about understanding I can lead a full and enjoyable life in a wheelchair but at the same time knowing it will be different.”

It is strange to see Cairns – a giant of a man, whose natural bullishness made him seem even bigger in his playing pomp – so physically diminished. But, as he points out himself, he is simply “lucky to still be here”.

The 51-year-old suffered an aortic dissection – an often fatal rare heart condition – in August and was on life support. He was saved by four open heart surgeries but such was the strain on his body, a blood clot formed and he had a spinal stroke on the operating table, leaving him paralysed from the waist down.

Four months later he is living at the University of Canberra hospital in a special rehabilitation facility while modifications are made to his home. 

“It has been 14 weeks since I had my injury and it feels like a lifetime when I look back, “ he says. “I have zero recollection of the eight or nine days when I had four open heart surgeries. My wife, Mel, was with me the whole time and I have to refer back to her constantly with regards to what was going on. I was completely out of it. 

“I remember dropping kids off at school that morning. But with an aortic dissection you are a functioning time bomb. The tear in your artery is leaking blood and your blood pressure drops. You are in a haze. I remember arriving at the emergency department, vomiting and then they took my blood pressure and rushed me through. They put me upside down to get blood flow down to the brain. Next thing I remember is waking up in Sydney nine days later not knowing what was going on.”