Amanda needed four titanium plates in her face

The BBC News website spoke to one nurse about her ordeal.

It should have been one of the happiest weeks of nurse Amanda Holmes' lives.

It was seven weeks before her wedding and she was just finishing her last nightshift before going on holiday with her husband to be.

Instead, she ended up under the knife

having facial surgery.

Mrs Holmes was working overnight on an acute medical ward at Bridlington Hospital in east Yorkshire in September 2001 when she was attacked by a patient.

She heard a noise in the corridor and went to investigate.

You watch programmes like Casualty on TV and it was just like that. My wife was laid up on the bed Martin Holmes

Here she found a patient, whom she had earlier identified as being potentially problematic, and asked him to return to his bed.

"There was quite a distance between us," she said, "and I didn't know he had anything in his hand.

"If I could have seen a weapon - I wouldn't have stood so close to him."

Then the patient struck her in the face with a hard, plastic water jug.

Hearing her shout out, her colleagues on the ward came running to her assistance.

"Obviously my face was bleeding and swollen and they took me to the nurses' station," she said.

"He (the patient) carried on threatening others."

Scars

She was then taken to the minor injuries unit where she was given some paper sutures to keep her left cheek together and her colleagues telephoned her fianc�.

For Amanda's now husband, Martin Holmes, it was a worst nightmare come true.

He said: "You watch programmes like Casualty on TV and it was just like that. My wife was laid up on the bed. It was terrible."

The pair were due to fly to Crete two days later.

Instead Mrs Holmes needed to have three titanium plates put in her face to keep it together. She also had stitches in her upper eyelid, hair-line and upper lip.

So severe was the emotional and physical trauma, that Mrs Holmes ended up taking 11 months off work.

'Lovely to me'

The injury has also left Mrs Holmes with a permanent crescent-shaped four inch scar on her cheek.

"I've also been left with permanent numbness on the left side of my face and in my teeth on that side," she said.

Upsetting though the experience was, it hasn't led Mrs Holmes to give up nursing.

She was determined not to let her attacker win.

"He may have messed up my face, but I wasn't going to let him ruin my career," she said.

And the couple did not let the attack ruin their wedding day either and got married against the odds on 27 October as planned.

Mr Holmes said despite the injury, his wife still looked lovely on the big day.

"She always looks lovely to me."

However, the patient in question was never prosecuted following a decision by the Crown Prosecution Service.