UK veteran and double amputee Michael Swain talks about the incredible new prosthetic legs he received from orthopaedic surgeon, Dr Munjed Al Muderis.

MICHAEL Swain was just 20 years old on November 8 in 2009 when he triggered an insurgent bomb in southern Afghanistan and lost both his legs.

Precisely a decade earlier to the day in 1999, Dr Munjed Al Muderis landed on Christmas Island after a perilous journey in a rickety Indonesian boat to seek asylum from the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein in his homeland of Iraq.

Fast forward to 2013 and the two men’s lives converged in a Sydney clinic where Dr Al Muderis, by then a reservist with the RAAF and one of the world’s leading specialists in a little-known strand of orthopedic surgery called osseointegration, changes the former British soldier’s life with a radical procedure to fuse titanium rods into his femur bones.

Rifleman Swain was two months into his tour with Britain’s 3 Rifles in the Sangin region of Helmand Province when his legs were blown off and he almost died.

Sangin was the most dangerous place on Earth at the time and during his tour British forces suffered 30 killed and 160 wounded — the highest casualty rates since the Korean War.

Swain spent three years in rehab including 18 months learning to walk on carbon socket mounted prosthetic legs. By January 2013 he was nowhere near as mobile as he wanted and he decided that the socket system was never going to work for him.

“I wanted to walk and be active but I wasn’t and it was getting me down,’’ he said.

Despite the problems with his legs he managed to raise 250,000 pounds (AU$463,000) for various charities by riding a hand bike from Edinburgh to London in five days. He has sky dived, run the Marine Corps marathon, met the PM at 10 Downing Street and lobbied MPs in the House of Commons.

But his world changed when he met a patient of Dr Al Muderis’ at a clinic in England who had undergone osseointegration in Sydney.

With the help of Lieutenant Colonel Rhodri Phillips from the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre, the men met and Mr Swain began another battle to have the procedure funded under the National Health Service. That failed but they convinced the Ministry of Defence of the merits of the procedure after Colonel Phillips travelled to Sydney on his own account to observe Dr Al Muderis in action.

The first procedure to insert the titanium implants took place on December 12 last year and eight weeks later he was back in surgery to have the adaptors fitted to the artificial bone that fits directly onto a robotic leg. Bone and muscle grow around the titanium on the bone end, essentially creating a bionic leg.

Swain was the third double amputee patient to have the osseointegration procedure in Australia.

Dr Al Muderis fled Iraq in 1999, two years after qualifying from Baghdad University, when he was ordered to amputate the ears from Iraqi soldiers who had deserted from Saddam’s insane regime. When his hospital supervisor was murdered in cold blood before his eyes he fled to Jordan before making his way to Java, via Abu Dhabi and Malaysia, where he boarded a people smuggling boat crammed with 150 passengers bound for Christmas Island. He spent the harrowing journey treating his fellow asylum seekers, who included several pregnant women, for severe sea sickness.

“There was no room even to sit, many people were just standing on deck,’’ he said.

Dr Al Muderis said there was nothing special about refugees, who represent a slice of society including the “good, the bad and the ugly”. But he said no one deserved to be known as a number like he was for 10 months in Curtin Detention Centre where he was known simply as “Number 982’’.

“People should never be a number, I don’t keep numbers, people have names,” he said.

After being told by then Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock that his qualifications would never be recognised in Australia, the young refugee medico emerged into Australian society and worked from Mildura to Canberra to prove his worth.

He obtained a job as Surgical Registrar at the Austin Hospital in Melbourne before placements at Bendigo, Wollongong and Canberra Hospitals.

“It was during my time at Austin Hospital that I studied to fulfil my dream to become an orthopedic robotics limb surgeon; a most fascinating and rewarding profession working with cutting-edge technology to assist those who have lost legs in combat, or through other health and accident reasons,’’ he said.

Despite his ordeal and the hurdles he was forced to overcome, Dr Al Muderis said that he felt very lucky to be an Australian.

He hopes to be able to provide his services to Australian soldiers who have lost limbs in war.

His first military patient flew for 25 hours, over other clinics in Sweden, Germany and France that conduct the procedure, to be treated by an Iraqi refugee.

His Sydney clinics at Norwest Private Hospital, Macquarie University and Sydney Adventist Hospital are regarded as worldwide centres of excellence and are better known abroad than in Australia. He has treated numerous Paralympians and other high achievers as well as cancer patients and other traumatic amputees.

Dr Al Muderis has been an air force reservist surgeon and squadron leader since 2010 and while he has been unable to deploy he hopes to work on the frontline to help Australian troops sometime in the future.

“I do try to present at military conferences and the word is spreading,’’ he said.

“The culture needs to change and change means the unknown but if we wait to see the long-term results we will miss the boat.’’

Dr Al Muderis said most of his patients were happy to risk complications to undergo osseointegration and leave their archaic socket prosthetics behind.

“The sockets date from the 15th century and they haven’t changed much, but we are changing things now,’’ he said.

Last week Michael Swain walked onto a Qantas aircraft for the long flight back to England. In April he will march up to Her Majesty The Queen to receive an MBE and in June he will walk down the aisle with his bride Jade to begin the rest of his life with his son Max and his daughter due in April. He will retire from the Army to run a gym in Luton, north of London.

“My new legs are 10 times better. I will be able to do my job, play golf and be an active dad. There will be no wheelchair and I will go anywhere and do anything and I will spread the word about this amazing procedure and the incredible Dr Munjed Al Muderis.’’