Part 1 of Paul’s Story…
“You do know you will never walk again.”
These were the parting words of the spinal consultant at Lodge Moor Spinal Injuries Centre in Sheffield during my first weekly doctor’s ward round. I was seventeen years old and had sustained a spinal cord injury in a road traffic accident just two weeks earlier.
As I lay on my hospital bed, surrounded by medical staff I neither recognised nor understood, the consultation may have lasted only ten minutes. Yet the impact of that throwaway remark would remain with me for the rest of my life.
Being told something so life-changing at a young age, while surrounded by what were, at the time, total strangers, is difficult to comprehend. I could neither believe nor fully understand that I would never walk again and would spend the rest of my life relying on a wheelchair for mobility.
What I did not realise then was that the inability to walk was only one aspect of my injuries. The loss of motor control and sensation below my chest, together with bowel and bladder dysfunction, would prove just as devastating.
After the consultation, a ward nurse who had been present stayed behind to rearrange my bedding. She could see I was in shock, my eyes full of tears. Trying to comfort me, she gently suggested that everything would be all right. As she cared for me, she even removed a small piece of road tarmac from inside my earlobe where it had remained embedded since the accident.
I had entered a difficult chapter of my life, but one that would also reveal my own inner strength, the support of those around me, the power of a positive mindset, and opportunities in the future I could never have imagined at the time.
