by Ed Jackson
‘I have an ideal,’ Pete said, in his West Country accent.
‘What’s your idea?’ I asked, intrigued.
‘My ideal is that if we prop you up on the tilt table in the hallway, I can check on you between seeing other patients.’
I grinned. More time on the tilt table meant more time in rehab. I was up for it.
‘I’m also going to apply to the board for more physio time for you,’ Pete said, while continuing to press into my legs.
The spasms were at their most prolific in the mornings. A yawn and a stretch would often spark a wave of tension to run from my back into my legs, followed with some vibrating for a few seconds. As my right leg improved, the spasms became less frequent. In fact, they were almost entirely favouring the weaker left side. The spasms weren’t painful; they would sometimes prove quite pleasant as they provided a brief respite to the mundane stillness of my left leg.
A strange thing had started to happen: I had begun to control the spasms. By tensing my stomach and shifting my weight a little, I could send a spasm rolling down my body. Although not strictly under my control, it was such a relief to feel those dormant muscles kick back into life.
Pete was pressing down on my left leg and muttering his usual encouraging words, which sometimes sounded like incantations. Not having any sensory feedback in terms of movement or joint position was a difficult hurdle to overcome and my faith in the truth of his words was constantly being tested.
Pete pushed down again. Then something happened.
I felt something fire up in my left quad. Something bloody well fired in my passenger leg! A huge wave of excitement rolled over me, followed immediately by a sobering nervousness. Was that real? Or was it just another spasm?
‘I told you so,’ Pete said, raising an eyebrow. ‘Let’s do a retest.’ He pushed down again.
I felt it. A twitch that told me that my left leg was back in the game.
I had always hoped that I would walk again. I had always tried to stay positive. But at that moment, I knew there was a real chance it could happen.
Excited to share my news, I called my family and friends for an impromptu party in my room that evening. For me, the celebrations were limited to cranberry juice and a laxative. But a win’s a win.
We had friends round for lunch; I could hear their laughter from the kitchen as Lois loaded me up with plates of food to take out to them.
‘Can you manage?’ she asked, after kissing me lightly on the cheek.
‘Of course!’ I said, giving her one of my most winning smiles as I balanced the tray laden with food.
I turned from her and walked into the garden. It was hot and I blinked against the sudden brightness of the sunlight. Our friends turned to me expectantly and, sensing that the moment required a touch of showmanship, I did a little two-step dance before putting the tray of food on the table …
I woke up with a light sheen of sweat over my body. For a moment I thought I could still walk again and I was still that man who could carry a plate of food out to his friends. It took a few minutes to realise where I was. And that I wasn’t that man anymore.
Paul, the gentleman who cleaned my room every day, was emptying my bin. It had been another brutal night of being unable to cough for an hour and barely being able to sleep until 3 a.m.
Paul glanced over to me as he put a new liner into my bin. ‘You been having the dreams again?’
‘Is it that obvious?’
‘I reckon I’d have the same if I was in your place. I imagine it’s normal. They’ll change as you get used to it.’
‘I could ask some of the other patients I’ve made contact with about it,’ I said, while considering the possibility.
Paul straightened up. ‘I think that’s a good idea. You’ll be full of them today if you’ve already had one by this time in the morning.’
I smiled at him; perhaps I would have a few breakthroughs today.
I hadn’t told anyone about the dreams. I didn’t want to burden my family or friends with them. Paul was my only confidante when it came to my night-time worries and that was simply because he had witnessed me waking up from them.
I’d received lots of messages of support from people through Instagram: some had just been diagnosed with a spinal injury themselves; others were a few months or years down the line. The majority were well-wishers who had said that they’d been inspired by my positive reaction to the accident and it had helped put their own worries into perspective. It felt as if, finally, something positive was coming out of my accident. There had been a shift inside of me and it had made way for something new. I had begun to understand the power of helping yourself by helping others.
I knew it was time to reach out to the people who were further down the line and see what might be waiting for me. There were some things I just couldn’t tell my family (or Paul for that matter). I needed to speak to someone who understood what I had been through.
Paul carried on cleaning my room and we chatted away as we always did. As he left, I had a thought. I hoped that the cleaners and healthcare assistants all knew how important they were to the patients. The first person a patient sees in the morning has a huge impact on their day. Not everyone gets to be a Mr Barua and save a spine with tweezers and a microscope, but we could all try to be a Paul and turn someone’s recovery around.
The last couple of days had revolved around building on the power that was returning in my left leg. My blood pressure was finally starting to behave itself and now the second major benefit of the tilt table was becoming apparent. The nervous system is most active when upright, and working on the tilt table was allowing me to put pressure through the seven thousand nerve endings in each of my feet. My left leg was still feeling very strange. Nothing was firing below the knee and I wasn’t receiving much feedback, but the power was improving. Things had started moving along quickly. We kept pushing, kept ticking things off and driving on.
One morning Pete bounded into my room and I knew just by looking at him that he had something up his sleeve.
‘I’ve been looking at your progress and me and Wyn think you’re ready,’ he announced.
‘For …’ I responded.
‘To stand, of course,’ he said, looking at me as if I had missed the whole point of physio over the past few weeks.
Fortunately, he didn’t expect me to do this by myself and instead introduced me to a new piece of equipment. It was like a very tall, static Zimmer frame. As I held on to its two joysticks, Pete fitted the braces around my knees.
‘Are you ready?’ he asked as he stood by the controls.
I nodded.
Slowly I was winched up by the large strap he had already secured around my back.
‘Now’s the difficult bit,’ Pete said.
Using my back and elbows, I tried to pull myself upwards and do as much of the standing as possible, with the machine taking care of the rest. It took me straight back to the first time I tried to sit up. My muscles ached and threatened to tip me over in every direction. I quickly realised that the challenge was getting my balance – it always came back to those core muscles.
Ten attempts and a few spasms later, I was up. When I was fully straight, I took a moment to enjoy it. For the first time in weeks, I was standing on my own two feet. My left leg still felt like a prosthetic and I was wobbling around like I’d had one too many pints, but my God it felt good to be back on my feet.
Four days ago, a flicker in my left leg, and now, with help, I was standing.
I made a decision right then. Instead of looking at what I’d lost for the first time because of the accident, I was going to concentrate on what I’d gained for the second time during my recovery.
Later that day, Pete delivered the news that the board had approved his request and I would be able to get extra hours of physio with him. Relief flooded through me – I didn’t need to consider changing hospital anymore. Was there somewhere with better equipment? Probably. Was there somewhere with
more physios? Most likely. Was there somewhere with funnier nurses? I doubt it. Was there somewhere with another Pete? Definitely not.
Yes, my room was unbearably hot and perhaps in a private hospital there would be air conditioning. But Helena Ward went above and beyond in every respect. They were like one large family who knew they didn’t have the fanciest equipment or the most cutting-edge procedures, but they improvised and made up for it in other ways.
Because that’s the thing: recovery isn’t just about the standard of equipment or the hours they could put in. It’s about good mental health as well. Without that standard baseline, my motivation would have slipped. Without motivation, I would have still been lying in my bed, worrying about my recovery, or drifting away and living in the past.
Don’t judge a hospital by its cover. It’s not always the millions of pounds of equipment that matters; it’s the people.
Chapter 8
Roll With It (But Not All the Time)
‘A place has opened up for you at Salisbury Spinal Unit. You’ll be leaving Bath tomorrow,’ Pete informed me.
My face fell.
At the beginning of my stay at Bath hospital I had fantasised about hearing those words more than once. But the progress I had made on Helena Ward showed that my current rehab was working for me, and it was working well. The old adage, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’, sprang to mind. I realised that was a ridiculous thing to think, considering I was broken and would quite like to be fixed. However, I’d been on a tilt table most of that morning and the progress with my makeshift bench press had brought even more movement to both of my arms. When I’d arrived in Helena Ward, I’d still been on bed rest, with only a few twitching fingers and toes. Pete, Wyn and I had hit a groove; we understood each other now. Pete would set the boundaries but also let me cautiously test them.
‘And I have to go?’ I asked.
I was sitting up in my grandad chair, minus the peddles and monitor, where I’d spent most of my days.
‘I’m afraid so,’ Pete said, shuffling his notes around and not quite meeting my eye. ‘Once a space opens you are expected to leave this hospital. There are a few things I have to tell you about the specialist spinal units. Well prepared is well armed and all that.’
I looked up at him, ready to take on any advice he had to give me.
‘You’ll have more access to physio and different types of rehab there,’ Pete began. ‘There will be different therapists who can start helping you relearn all the things the body needs in order to become independent again. They have loads of equipment, and things like a hydrotherapy pool, which you haven’t used before. But when you get there, they’ll put you back on bed rest. They’ll want to assess you for themselves and won’t rely on our findings. So, you’ll have to jump through a few hoops before you can start your rehab again.’
I took a moment to think about it. ‘So, I won’t be able to practise standing for a while?’
Pete nodded. ‘It’s why I’ve been pushing for you to stand before you leave here. I knew you’d be transferred soon, and, if you can stand, it means that they are bound by the protocols to work towards you walking. If we just had you sitting, then they’d aim to discharge you in a wheelchair.’
I’d always known a large part of my past recovery was down to Pete. Now, he was taking care of my future recovery too.
I looked at Pete with new respect. ‘Why didn’t you say anything? I didn’t know you’d done this for me.’
He began to check the hoist next to my bed. ‘I didn’t want to get your hopes up and then crush them if I couldn’t get you standing. You didn’t need that pressure, what with everything else.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, hoping those two words would convey everything I was feeling.
‘It’s all right,’ Pete said, finally meeting my eye. ‘I knew we had a chance with you as you’re motivated to get better.’
‘Well, if I’m leaving tomorrow, there’s one more thing I’d like to do.’
An hour later, I was still in my wheelie grandad chair, but it was parked up in a different place. The back had been lowered and the footrest had been pushed up. The urine bag for my catheter was hanging off the side. If a hospital bed and a La-Z-Boy reclining chair had a summer fling, this might have been the outcome. It was another hot day and I closed my eyes, letting the sunlight smooth out the tension that had begun to surface on my skin in the recent weeks.
Pete was sitting in one of the lightweight visitors chairs next to me, his legs stretched out and his Armani sunglasses on. Molly was lying between my legs, enjoying a bit of al fresco time with me. Occasionally, I could hear the birds’ calls above the low rumble of cars reversing in and out of the parking spaces. It wasn’t a bad way to end my stay in Helena Ward. And if it happened that the only free space to park my chair in the hospital car park was one of the consultants’, then I was taking it.
The next morning, before leaving for Salisbury, my six closest female friends from school piled into my room. A few of them had brought their babies and all of them had something tasty to eat. Five of them were sitting on my bed, everyone was talking at once, one of the toddlers was circling the room pulling a balloon, and I had the other sleeping baby propped into the crook of my arm.
All too soon they were wishing me good luck as the paramedics came to collect me for my transfer to a new hospital. I’d already said my individual goodbyes to the staff and I’d put up a post on Instagram that summarised my feelings on leaving:
I am coming away from the RUH with about six adopted mums, two brothers, twelve Filipino cousins and a Godfather so it’s been a busy month. Mandy, thanks for threatening to clip each one of my mates around the ear. Lorraine, I’ll keep hold of that belly button fluff (don’t ask). Sharon, I won’t say what you said, and Andy, don’t have too much fun in Thailand. Pete, Wyn, you know what you’ve done already, I’m not going to thank you yet because we’re not done! … I’ll miss all you bonkers lot but I’ll be back in as soon as I get home, behave yourselves.
Looking around at the lilac walls of the ward that I had initially dismissed as the wrong place for my recovery, I hoped that the next stage of my journey would be just as successful.
The ambulance rumbled along the country roads that connected Bath to Salisbury. I was half listening to the ambulance driver’s The Best of Faces album, which he had already played through twice. My mind drifted and I began to imagine what I would be doing if the accident hadn’t have happened. Now that I was spending more time on social media, I was more aware of what other people were getting up to. I couldn’t help but make comparisons with my own life. That’s the downside to those carefully filtered snippets of other peoples’ lives – it makes our thoughts automatically jump to our own reality.
It was officially holiday season for rugby players and around now Lois and I would have been packing our bags for a trip away. My friends’ holiday pictures were starting to pop up on my Instagram feed and I was beginning to suffer from a very severe case of FOMO. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy for my friends that were getting a bit of early summer sunshine – they’d worked hard all year and deserved it. But it would’ve been nice if I could be out there with them, with Lois, who needed a holiday more than ever. The negative thoughts popped into my head, one after the other, dragging me down with them.
I knew I had to do something to stop this spiral, so I started reframing those thoughts. This is a technique I’ve mentioned before and maybe one you’ve heard of. For those of you who haven’t come across this little gem of a mind hack, then I’m going to go into a bit more detail here now.
We all have an inner monologue that can either be our most vehement champion or harshest critic. Reframing thoughts is a way of turning critical or negative thoughts into positive ones.
‘I can’t believe that diving into a pool left me with only 4mm of spinal cord’ became, ‘At least I have 4mm of spinal cord left; it gives me the chance of a recovery.’
‘I feel
bad that all my friends, family and Lois have to spend all their free time with me. I’m sure there are other places they’d rather be’ became, ‘I’m lucky to have friends and family who want to visit me. I’m lucky to have Lois.’
‘If I have to listen to The Best of Faces album for a third time, I might release the brake on my bed and see where the open road takes me’ became, ‘At least I’m relaxed enough to be able to listen to the music. The last ambulance journey I was worrying about damaging my spine the entire time.’
So what if I couldn’t go on holiday this year? There would be other holidays in the future, even if I didn’t make any further recovery. Reframing leads to rethinking. And rethinking leads to re-feeling.
As I arrived at Salisbury spinal unit, a modern hospital with a triangular, peaked roof, I prepared myself to meet a whole new group of people. Not only would I have to go through the usual routine of meeting new staff members – ‘Hello, I’m Ed. Yes, we can do a manual evacuation now if you want …’ – but I’d soon be meeting all of the other patients as well. I’d been in my own bubble at the previous hospitals and now I would be on one of the open wards with eight other patients.
I was rolled into a side room and informed by the nurse that I would be in a private room for two days as they carried out the checks and assessments Pete had told me about. He’d been right that the new team wanted to form their own opinion of my condition.
Mum and Lois began unloading all of my paraphernalia and Dad was on hand for when I met the consultant. I remained lying down in my hospital bed, even though I’d spent most of my time sitting up for the last couple of weeks. There were new rules to abide by.
It clearly wasn’t the hospital’s first rodeo. In the space of four hours, I’d had three X-rays, two ultrasounds, an ASIA test, been measured for a wheelchair, and met the consultant. I’d made her jump when I’d pulled my right arm out to shake her hand. She’d only seen my original scans so had presumed that I was a complete spinal cord injury with no movement below the neck. She’d actually jumped. I knew then that they hadn’t read my notes, and if they had, they were still going to treat me as if my accident was yesterday.
