On Christmas Day, I was technically dead.
Hurry up! Hurry up!
I looked down and saw the knife.
My brain just had shut down completely.
He needs an ambulance.
CAROL SINGERS: # Silent night... #
It was the Christmas period.
It was absolutely ram-packed.
Shoppers everywhere.
I was a sales assistant at H&M.
It was my break, and about five o'clock,
come outside, and there was just...
I just basically had a load of abuse hurled at me from outside the bank.
There was two lads. They weren't going to leave me alone.
I tried to just walk on, walk back to work,
but that wasn't going to be the case.
We heard noise outside.
We just thought it was boys being stupid,
never thinking it would get any worse.
They're down the side of the pub.
I'm just used to it being very aggressive where I'm from.
The younger generation, they all want to prove a point,
but I was not expecting what was about to happen next.
OPERATOR: OK, we'll get somebody there now.
The other boy just ran at him.
It just felt like a punch to the stomach.
My whole body just kind of went completely numb, cold.
Shivering.
I lifted my shirt up and I kind of realised.
He was running. He was screaming.
He didn't know what to do.
It was like watching a dog chase its tail.
I just collapsed on the floor.
The first thing to do is call for help.
Don't leave it to chance.
Those first few minutes before it arrives could mean life or death.
When he pulled up his shirt, I expected to see a slit,
but it was like a very small crater that was oozing blood.
The blade nicked Dom's aorta,
the biggest artery in the body.
It carries more than six pints of blood
down from your heart every minute.
From that hole, Dom was losing blood fast from the inside.
He was very, very cold,
but really perspiring badly.
And shaking.
His words weren't coming out properly.
His pulse rate was going mad,
and, you think, "Please, God, get the ambulance here quick!"
Dom was losing blood on the inside, so his heart was racing
to try and get enough to his brain to keep him conscious and alive.
The abdomen can fill up with pints of blood,
even if you can't see much come out.
You've got about ten pints in total.
Lose four of those and you might only have minutes to live.
Everything was blurred,
and sound was echoing.
It was just a lot of screaming and a lot of people crowding over me.
My first instinct was to put my hand on it.
And then, once I got the tissues,
I was able to replace my hand with the tissues.
Putting pressure on the stab wound
can help slow down the bleeding.
That gives the body a chance to start fixing itself
by forming blood clots.
But if the blade is still stuck in, don't pull it out,
and don't move it around.
It might be the only thing keeping you alive.
I felt like the journey to the hospital was going to be too long.
I had a choice in that ambulance to give up or fight for my life.
And I decided to fight.
Every single breath felt like a minute.
One quick glimpse of the surgery table and then, just black...
..for a very long time.
The doctor said to my mum, "Please don't get your hopes up,
"because there's a good chance
"that you won't see your son ever again."
It was just excruciating pain from the second I woke up.
And I found out that I'd missed New Year and Christmas Day which was...
..I was absolutely gutted about.
The actual stab wound itself is really very small,
but the surgery left me with a devastating open wound.
There was too much swelling,
and they said that if that was to have burst open at any point,
which it could have very easily done, then I would have died.
They put some mesh over the top to stop my organs falling out.
I had to have three showers a day
just to clean the muck that was coming out of it constantly.
I had to have the nurses assisting me at the bathroom.
I lost all my dignity when it happened.
I was at the lowest of lows,
I did not come out of it feeling like it was a battle scar.
I come out of it embarrassed to look at my own body,
ashamed to look in the mirror, and I felt like it was never going to end.
I wasn't able to go out on a bike.
I wasn't able to go and play football.
Once you have those privileges taken away from you,
you become so much more grateful for what you actually had.
Even the smallest knife wounds can change your life.
Damaging the pudendal nerve can cause impotence.
That's no more sex, ever.
And if the blade catches the bowel,
that could mean living with a colostomy bag
for the rest of your life.
With more than 20 major arteries around the body
and over 100 vital nerves,
there's nowhere safe to be stabbed.
I know it sounds crazy, but it has changed me for the better.
The Dom back then,
I was a bit lazy, I was a bit negative.
Whereas now, I'm not ashamed of anything.
I completely embrace what's happened.
I want to become the best version of myself possible.
I had no previous knowledge of what to do,
I'm sure that none of my friends,
if they were with me, would've had any knowledge on what to do.
There was a lady who come to my aid
and managed to keep me alive.
If he had been anywhere remote
and there was nobody around to help him,
I'm quite convinced he wouldn't be alive today.
Totally convinced of that.
Recovering from that is something I would never ever
want to go through again.
I don't have any hate towards the person who did it to me,
I'm on to the next chapter in my life.