My lip ripped off doing a backflip from a boat — I’m lucky to be alive

His lips were almost put out of service.

A man from England is lucky to be alive after he ripped off his lip while doing a backflip on vacation in Turkey — as doctors warned him that he could have snapped his neck with the dangerous move.

In a terrifying video, Macaulay Burke, 28, can be seen doing a backflip off a boat, but before he landed, an unexpected wave hit the boat, causing it to jolt as he smashed into the side of the vessel.

“As soon as I took off I knew it was going to end badly, there was not much reaction time,” Burke told Kennedy News and Media. “The boat hit me straight in the face.”

As a result, Burke, who works as a butcher, suffered a number of injuries, including a completely torn bottom lip and a broken nose in which part of his nostril was ripped off.

“I dislocated my jaw and managed to tear my gums apart so you could see the jaw bone,” he added.

At first, Burke said that he didn’t realize how badly he had been injured, and got back onto the boat with the help of another passenger.

As a former rugby player who had broken his nose multiple times, the 28-year-old recalls thinking that he could handle it, but when he looked into the mirror, all he could see was blood.

“I was just swallowing so much blood,” he said.

Burke was then taken on a speedboat along with his brother-in-law, Ainsley Carpenter, 32, back to shore where an ambulance was waiting to take him to hospital.

He had to undergo a two-hour reconstructive surgery on his face where he received 50 stitches.

“They did a brilliant job in Turkey,” he said. “My nose hasn’t been this straight since before playing rugby.”

After two days in the hospital, he was given the clearance to fly back home to the UK, where he met with facial reconstruction specialists who told him that he was “lucky.”

“I go to the gym quite a lot and train and they said that if I didn’t have a strong neck and shoulders, I could have snapped my neck and be in a very different position,” Burke admitted.

“A doctor said I could be dead if I had snapped my neck on impact.”

He believes that if anyone was “smaller” or “skinnier” than him, there could have been a very different outcome to this situation.

Burke is also warning other travelers that they should opt for any kind of travelers insurance, as he estimated it will save him nearly $64,000.

“You need to get insurance, even if you think you’re not going to hurt yourself,” he warned.

But at the end of the day, the butcher said that he’s extremely grateful to those surgeons who helped him out.

“I am very thankful to the surgeons and the insurance company for helping me out,” Burke said. “It could have been a very different story.”