Spinalroots

Before I broke my back and became disabled ‘for real’ I had a previous accident. At the age of twenty I was knocked off a bicycle, left unconscious in the road and then run over by a car. It nearly tore my right foot off, damaged my left knee and my head and body went underneath the car with what must have been the sump hitting me in the side of the head. That’s three quarters of a ton of metal travelling at speed! The driver never stopped.

Being young, and thinking I was invincible, I soldiered on and threw myself back into life thinking it wouldn’t bother me. For two years I did well, at least well in terms of keeping my spirits up. Physically I tended to overdo things and my ankle, especially, would swell up at times and lock solid. I got back to college after only a term off and the following summer I moved to Wales to work for a year as part of the course I was doing. I had a fantastic year, although coming back to London after the wilds of Wales was a little depressing and physically I was starting to struggle. The reality of living with injury was starting to press home.

I finished the year at college and obtained my degree, but it was tough and I had little desire left to get a job in engineering product design that I was trained for. Manufacturing industry had come to symbolise all that I despised about our industrial civilization. Maybe I should thank the accident for ensuring that I don’t now go to work in a suit and tie and have never become another pawn in the machine. As it was I returned to Dorking, my home town, exhausted both physically and mentally. There was work to do to overcome what had happened to me three years previously.

I never lost my thirst for life and my twenties were good years. Motorcycling with a dog that rode pillion, camping, rafting down rivers and a great deal of partying. They were, however, tough years mentally. If I had spoken to a doctor I would easily have been diagnosed with depression. I drunk a lot and rarely went a day without being stoned. My twenty fifth birthday was one of the lowest days of my life. I arrived at a friends house for dinner, late and a little drunk and I remember saying to him that surviving quarter of a century deserved a month off, and that’s how I felt. It was also a turning point.

I didn’t have the month off. I got back to physio, joined a yoga class, took to walking barefoot and dramatically improved my physical condition. I restored an old lorry, had a go at running a business with it and really began to get my head round life. Three years later, though, I sold my lorry and was labouring to try and pay my way having no real idea where life was going and then fate decided for me. I had an accident with a dumper truck, got crushed underneath it and broke my back.

While I was lying in hospital paralysed from the waist down a friend came to see me and said, “That first accident was just preparing you for this one”. In many ways she was right.