by Ed Jackson
That’s the thing about motivation, it won’t often present itself to you, ready for you to grasp. If you sit around waiting for it, it becomes a shy creature, often out of reach. One of the few certainties in life is that time will pass. You can spend the next hour doing something that will make a difference. Or you can spend it waiting for motivation to show its face. Either way, an hour will pass. Best use it wisely.
The next morning, I was ready to go. Effort was what I’d hung my hat on before and it was what would get me through this time as well.
Pete and Wyn had visited me first thing and Pete had begun to test if there was any movement in my left leg. He would hold my foot in his hand and push the leg up, so my knee bent and thigh moved towards my chest.
‘I can definitely feel a twitch in your left leg,’ Pete said.
I couldn’t feel a thing. Pete had said this a few times and I was beginning to wonder whether he was saying this to encourage me or if it was really there.
‘Ooh, there was another one.’
‘Hmm …’ I responded.
Don’t get me wrong, Pete was highly skilled at what he did. After years of experience he had turned physio into an art form; it was beyond a science for him. He had a gift and a way of feeling his way across a body that was almost instinctive. But perhaps his encouraging words weren’t a true reflection of my physical state.
As we took a break, I showed Pete some of the movement coming back in my left arm. I couldn’t move my hand at all, but coupled with the movement in my right arm that had been increasing over the last couple of weeks, I was getting close to being able to bench press. When I say bench press, I hope you include a 20cm lift with my right arm holding a rolled-up magazine. My biggest problem was grip. My left hand hung limply and refused to support anything.
After inspecting my arm, Pete tried putting a broom handle in both of my hands. I could loosely curl my right hand around it, but my left one just flapped around. He extended my left wrist and I watched as my left hand clawed around the broom handle.
‘Don’t get excited,’ Pete warned. ‘It’s just a tenodesis grasp, an automatic reaction, not the real thing.’
Still, with my hand clawed around the broom handle, it meant I could balance it and begin my small bench presses. The idea of being able to do an actual bench press, however small, by myself – my own exercise regime – was enough to give me a small spark of hope.
Next up was the tilt table. If you ever saw a tilt table out of context, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it was some sort of medieval torture device. The theory to it is simple. Apart from my recent visits to the grandad chair, I’d been on my back for a month and even sitting up would sometimes make me feel dizzy. The accident had affected some of my automatic responses as well as my motor and sensory function. So, before I could even consider being back on my feet, my body had to be trained to regulate its own blood pressure again.
Lie down on a table, stay still, get tilted forwards. Sounds simple enough, but Pete had warned me that the tilt table could double up as a good way to get information out of people. Over the next hour, Pete increased the gradient of the table until my blood pressure dropped. He would then bring me back down again until it normalised. This process was then repeated until I tried to punch him or pass out.
The further up it went, the harder the adjustment. On the eighth trip I could feel my right hand automatically grasp for anything to try to steady myself.
‘Are you all right?’ Pete asked from the side of the table.
‘Umhum,’ was all I could manage.
The world was closing in on me and my body had gone into panic mode trying to protect me from unseen dangers. As the blood drained from my head all I could feel was an impending sense of doom. The warnings now all made sense. Although safe, the repetitive nature of the process resembled entry-level torture. As horrific as it was, I was still enjoying pushing myself to the edge again.
Pete lowered me down and my body began to settle. I counted out two minutes in my head.
Testing myself physically is what I’ve always enjoyed. Always have, always will. My first rugby match had taught me that there is no progression unless you are pushed out of your comfort zone. When I stripped it back, I realised that was all this situation was, another test of endurance. The stakes may have been higher, but the rules hadn’t changed.
When I’d finished counting the minutes in my head, I looked at Pete directly. ‘I’m ready. Take me up again.’
It was early evening and Lois was sitting on the edge of my bed. The other visitors had trailed away for their evening plans and for once it was just the two of us. Lois was quieter that evening and I suspected that she had something to tell me. Some of my dad’s friends had visited and offered me tickets to see Fleetwood Mac in August … in New York. They knew it was unlikely I would make it, but it gave me something to aim for, something that maybe I could do. In the end, I asked her what was worrying her.
‘It’s the wedding,’ she replied. ‘I know it’s unlikely you’ll make it to New York and it’s a lovely motivator for you, but we have to think realistically about the wedding next year. The next instalment is due to be paid and we can’t afford to lose the money. I think we both know it’s not going to happen, so we shouldn’t keep on paying money towards it.’
I tried to meet her gaze. I knew she was right. An image flashed into my mind of me lying on a hospital bed under the arched flowers, unable to even appreciate the view of the Tuscan hills. We’d chosen the venue of our dreams, but it just wasn’t practical, or even possible, to travel to Italy.
‘I’m sorry, Lois. I know how much you were looking forward to it.’
‘It is what it is,’ she said. ‘We can try again the following year maybe.’
I smiled at her. ‘Give me your hand.’
She slipped her hand with the engagement ring she always wore into my palm.
I gave it the gentlest squeeze.
That night, after typing out another Instagram post, I lay in my hospital bed staring up at the ceiling. I had posted every single day that week but hadn’t wanted to check the responses. It was hard enough opening up about what was happening to me, without also finding out what people thought of it.
The nurses had told Lois she could stay for the night. She was curled up on the floor next to me on an air bed. I didn’t know whether she was asleep yet; probably not. She would be thinking about how different our year had turned out.
I had let her down. She had been counting down the days to this wedding. The man she intended to marry had been taken away from her and now she couldn’t even have the day she wanted. I had to make it up to her somehow. I knew nothing would replace the day we had been looking forward to. But there must be something I could do for her … then it came to me.
‘Lois, are you still awake?’
‘Yes.’ There was a rasping sound to her voice that I didn’t recognise. ‘Do you need some water?’
‘No, I’m fine. I’ve been thinking, you should still go on the netball tour around New Zealand this summer.’
‘Don’t be daft, Ed,’ Lois mumbled. ‘I can’t do that. I’d be gone for two weeks.’
‘You can and you should. I’ve got my physio to concentrate on—’
‘Two hours a day isn’t going to keep you occupied.’
‘The lads have said they’ll be my replacement Pete when he’s not around. I won’t have a spare minute.’
A small, white lie. There was only so much physio my friends could do without access to the right equipment, but I knew it would help.
There was the unmistakable sound of Lois clambering out of her sleeping bag and a second later she was sitting on my bed.
‘Are you sure? No, don’t say it now. Have a think about it. You can sleep on it. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.’
I smiled at her in the dark as I took her hand. I wouldn’t be changing my mind. This road to recovery wasn’t just about my physical state; it was about everyo
ne around me returning to their lives as well.
Chapter 7
Second Time for Firsts
It was a Friday morning, a month after my accident, and I’d had my two hours of physio for the day. It would be another three days before I’d get to do anything with Pete and Wynn again. I was ready to do three whole days, put the effort in, but there was no one available to do it with me. Pete had all the other patients on the ward to see and the hospital closed down at weekends.
If Pete had a catch phrase, it would be ‘ramp it up’. I concluded that because I was hearing him utter these words more often, it was a sign that we were making progress. Naturally, as I became stronger, I was able to handle more and this was exactly what I needed.
In the last two days I’d seen a flicker of life in my left hand. My left side was swinging back into action and I could now bench press my broom handle by 30cm. The question now was, did the NHS have the resources to provide the necessary hours of rehab that I needed?
Restart, a charity that supports professional rugby players, had told me and my family that they would help us get the best care possible. I was incredibly grateful to them for their generous offer but knew that they couldn’t begin organising this for me until I was discharged from hospital. While an inpatient, I wasn’t allowed to mix private physio with NHS physio for insurance reasons. I was still waiting for a place to open up at an NHS specialist spinal unit but I’d been told that this could take weeks, even months.
My enthusiasm threatened to ebb and frustration had started to creep back in. Previously, I’d coped with frustration by focusing on the process, not the outcome. But this was a different situation. I didn’t have access to the hours of physio that I needed, so I couldn’t focus on the process.
At night, I had tortured myself by reading up on spinal cord treatment in America and Japan. I knew the NHS was years behind in providing what had become standardised in other countries. It was overstretched and underfunded. All the studies I’d read showed that volume and early intervention could make the difference between walking and a wheelchair.
I’d also looked up the cost of a private spinal rehab hospital as well. I had to check it twice as I couldn’t believe it – ten thousand pounds a week. Ten thousand pounds a week! That amount of money was insane … But then at night, when I was alone and terrified of being a burden to Lois or my mum for the rest of my life, I began to wonder. How much would I pay to walk again? What if I missed the chance to become independent? With the gift of hindsight, would a future me be wishing that I’d paid for private treatment now? I could sell my house in Cardiff; that would give me a few months …
As I churned over the options, I’d tried to come up with innovative ways of carrying on my physio while Pete wasn’t there. I would use anything around me with a bit of weight to it and strap it to my wrist and try to lift it. Movement was creeping down from my shoulders to my hands. Pete would pop into my room between seeing patients and plonk the broom handle into my right hand and say, ‘Give me four hundred reps.’ Pete’s military background mixed with my career as a professional sportsperson meant his methods resonated well with me. I would usually get competitive, so by the time he came back, 400 reps had often turned into 600.
I’d recently persuaded some rugby player mates to take off the hollow, metal footplate at the bottom of my bed and wrap my curled hands around it. I then used this as my new weight to bench press as it was a couple of kilos heavier. A few times it had slipped out of my hands and clonked me on the nose, resulting in a nosebleed, but I didn’t mind.
As I worked my way through another set of reps while chatting to Lois, Rich and my brother Josh, I was pleased to see two of the nurses pop their heads around my door.
‘We thought we’d come and have lunch with you.’
‘You two again?’ I said, smiling at them. ‘We’ve got Lois’s current favourite, 13 Reasons Why, on. Come on in and talk loudly over it if you want. The louder, the better.’
‘Oooh, I haven’t seen this one,’ the taller nurse said, taking one of the spare seats.
They both settled down and we all chatted as we half paid attention to the programme.
‘What have you got for lunch?’ I asked, peering towards their lunch boxes.
‘Ed,’ Lois said, ‘you only ate an hour ago.’ She turned to the nurses. ‘Ignore him, he’s already had three meals today. He’s pretty far from being starved.’
‘Here, you can have this,’ one of the nurses said, popping a mini Babybel into my mouth. ‘In exchange, I want some of your belly button fluff so I can sell it on eBay and retire.’
‘Think you better lower your expectations on how much that would raise,’ I responded.
‘Not now that you’re famous,’ Rich teased. ‘Haven’t you checked your Instagram account?’
‘No. I’ve been posting but haven’t looked at the responses.’
‘You should take a look,’ Lois said. ‘Things have started taking off.’
‘Oh yeah?’ I said, as I continued with my broom handle reps. ‘I’ll have a look tonight.’
A phone was dangled in front of my nose and the broom handle was taken out of my hands.
‘Take a look now,’ Lois said.
My Instagram account took up the screen. She pointed at the corner.
‘Oh,’ I said, hardly believing what I was seeing. ‘Ten thousand is quite a lot. Isn’t it?’
In the space of a week I had gained ten thousand followers. I switched on my iPad and began scrolling through all the messages.
The following day was my stepbrother’s birthday and, after a meal out, the whole family and several of his friends were coming to visit me to round off the celebrations. Sixteen of us in total would be packed into my new room. I’d recently had an upgrade and was now the grateful owner of a side room with an en suite. It didn’t get much better than that on Helena Ward. Having an en suite also meant that for the first time since the accident, I could have a shower.
Sometimes, I would lie still in my hospital bed and pretend there was nothing wrong with me. I was just lying in a normal bed, waiting for an excuse to get up. I’d imagine that I’d got home from a ten-kilometre run with Lois and we’d both crashed out for a mid-afternoon nap. Or, I would take us away on holiday. We were jet-lagged, having woken up at 3 a.m., discussing whether to get up and watch the sunrise together. It was a game I would play that helped me to relax. It offered me a bit of peace now and again.
The opposite to this was being stripped naked, transferred in a hoist to a chair and wheeled into a bathroom to be washed down by two people I had only just met.
I had never felt so disabled as I did the moment I was hoisted, naked, out of bed. I was tucked up and winched over my bed, my body balled up tight with the bottom half of my legs and arms spraying out in different directions. Even if I could move, I would never have been able to get out of this contraption. I felt incredibly vulnerable.
What if this is the end of my recovery? Will Lois or my mum have to learn how to do this?
I’d never given much thought to the process of getting out of bed. It was just something I did while thinking about what I was going to do later that day. Now it took twenty minutes and a team of three people. For all my 30cm bench presses and flickering left hand, I was still incredibly far from where I wanted to be.
Sitting on the special plastic chair under the shower, it was lovely to feel the water run down my back and to have my hair washed. Perhaps it would have been more pleasant if there weren’t two people I hadn’t met before staring at me. The process did have an upside, though. Running the shower over me showed that although I couldn’t differentiate between hot and cold on my right side, my left side was progressing and starting to feel more normal.
I’m sure that, after four weeks, everyone else was very excited that I was finally getting to have a shower, but it was one of the worst experiences I had in hospital. Lying in a bed you can forget; you can kid yourself that you’re in a be
ach hut in Bali. Having a shower stripped away all those fantasies and shone a cold, hard light on the reality of my situation. It also gave me a glimpse at what the rest of my life could be.
There was a mirror on the back of the door in the bathroom. As I was hoisted from the shower seat, I forced myself to take a long look at my body. I could definitely see that the muscles wastage had begun to do its worst. The thick strips of muscle around my neck had gone, my chest had shrunk, as had my legs. I suppose I still had more muscle than most people, but that wasn’t the point. I didn’t look like me anymore and that hurt. The worst thing was that I knew there was more wastage to come. It wouldn’t just stop today because I’d finally seen myself. It’s not easy watching the person you know disappearing by the day.
After my shower I had my first haircut since the accident, and I was weighed. Back in bed again, clean as a whistle and with a new lid, I thought about the two and a half stone I’d lost. All I’d had to do was lie down and do nothing for a month. Some people may think, ‘Perfect, summer’s coming. I’ll just tuck myself up in bed for the run up to Ibiza’, but that’s the thing: none of my weight loss was fat. It was all muscle. Ten years’ worth of muscle that I’d worked hard every day to build and maintain. At fifteen stone, I was the lightest I’d been since I was 14 years old.
If I said that watching my body change didn’t bother me, I would be lying. Of course it did. But if I let myself dwell on this, let it affect me, then I would be wasting time instead of concentrating on what was important.
I knew I had to stop myself worrying about things I couldn’t affect or control. I had wasted so much energy wondering where I would be in a year. Or re-running the accident and what I could have done to stop myself from diving into the pool. Instead, I should have used this energy positively and worked harder on my rehab. Only try to control the controllable.
