I just couldn’t believe it. I was speechless.
I’m in the middle of Salisbury Hospital, with all the buzzers, the ward and the drama.
Then, all of a sudden, I’m in this quiet, picturesque garden; this area of bloom with trees and flowers; things I hadn’t seen for months and months and months.
It was just like heaven. It was unreal.
I’ll never forget that first day when I went out into the garden. We came out of the lift and along the corridor and all I could smell was chlorine. I thought we were going to the pool! We got to the end and the double doors opened and that’s when I saw it.
The beauty of this garden is that it’s only for people in the spinal injury centre. For me, that’s so important because of the nature of our injuries; the trauma that we’ve been through. It’s amazing to have somewhere peaceful and quiet, but also somewhere fun and filled with happiness. We’ve been through such bad times, so to suddenly feel the air, smell the flowers, see the garden, be part of being normal again, it all means so much to someone like me.
Ten months ago, my life looked very different. I was living in Dubai with my wife Sandra and we loved it. It was a great way for us to finish off our careers and we were looking forward to coming back home, retiring and being closer to our two children and their young families.
I spent 22 years in the army. I joined the tank regiment back in 1984, when I was only 17 and eventually transferred to the Small Arms School Corps, where I stayed for 10 years. I reached the rank of Warren Officer Class 1, so I did my full colour service.
As I was preparing to leave the army, I was very kindly awarded an MBE for services to charity by The Queen in 2005. It was a really lovely way to finish off my service and it was a fantastic honour. I had a great time taking my family up to the palace to see me receiving it!
We’ve lived in the United Arab Emirates twice now, coming back to the UK in between when I was looking for new challenges and opportunities. I’ve worked in everything from private security for the Royal Presidential Guard in Dubai, to making sure the trains on the Northern Line run on time in London.
We weren’t planning to come back from Dubai for a little while yet.
That changed when I had my accident.
One Saturday morning, as I often did, I went to get a haircut. I said goodbye to Sandra, went out the front door, got on my electric scooter, waved to the security guard as I went by and set off on my journey.
It was the same route I’ve always taken.
Only this time, I hit a piece of kerb.
All I remember is hearing a very loud thud and then it was black.
I woke up on the concrete, 10 or 12 metres past the point of impact.
I remember lying there and the blood was running through the concrete. It was burning my face, but I couldn’t feel anything else. All I wanted to do was get up. I kept on trying to get up.
It felt like a lifetime that I was lying there. Somebody came to help me, and I can just remember telling them that I didn’t want to die there.
An ambulance arrived and I was taken to hospital. In hindsight, it was funny because when the accident happened, they must have thought there was a car involved, so two fire engines escorted us. You can imagine when I turned up at the hospital, they probably thought it was a major incident! But it was just me.
The doctors told me I had an incomplete spinal injury and that I’d broken two vertebrae at C4 and C6. They’re in your neck and mostly control your arms and your hands. I can remember I just kept saying “this can’t be true.”
But it was. I could only move my right toe.
I was in Dubai Hospital for seven weeks. Everyone was so kind to me and my wife and our family. The staff there really looked after me and my family and friends were amazing.
They wouldn’t repatriate me until my neck was stable. Eventually, it was safe for me to travel on a normal plane, but I can safely say it was probably the most interesting flight I’ve ever taken. I’ve been in the army, I’ve been all over the world, I’ve been in all sorts of aircraft, but never have I been on a stretcher at the back of an A380 Airbus.
They collapsed nine seats and built a sort of scaffolding on top of the seats, so the stretcher went on top of that. I was four or five inches from the luggage compartments for eight hours. You can imagine, lying there all that time was pretty hard going. Lots of people stopped to talk to me though, and everyone was so kind. It made the journey go a lot quicker.
I finally made it to Southampton General and stayed there for three weeks. After that, I moved to the Western Community Hospital to start my rehabilitation. Without the support of their physios and occupational therapists, there’s no way I would’ve made as much progress in my early recovery. They prepared me to come to the spinal centre in Salisbury.
Which is where I am today and where I’ve been since June.
I won’t be discharged for a little while yet, so I’ll certainly be here until after Christmas.
It’s really daunting spending Christmas in hospital. I’ve visited soldiers, friends and colleagues in hospital over the holidays before, but I’ve never actually been a patient. I was always the one that visited, said “cheerio,” got in the car and went home to my Christmas.
I don’t know what to expect, but I know that I can rely on the garden and that it’ll play a massive part in our Christmas this year. It’s always open, there’s always someone there to help and to talk to and I’m so thankful to have it as my rock this winter.
My family and friends are all visiting me too. My wife, children and grandchildren live in Southampton, which is a good 40-50 minutes away. So, rather than being on the ward, we’ll wrap up warm and we’ll be down here for the festivities. We’ll have coffee, cake and some non-alcoholic (of course!) drinks and leave the reindeer a carrot and Santa a cup of tea. We’re really looking forward to being here as a family.
Whether we like it or not, the spinal centre has become my home, so the garden has become my home too. It’s become my garden. Sometimes when you have an injury like this, you start to feel useless. But the garden makes me feel involved. It makes me feel wanted. I feel happy and relaxed when I’m here. I love it.
The activities, volunteers and team here are all fantastic. There’s something new happening every day and everybody knows each other. I’ve been able to have a lot of my rehabilitation sessions down here too, including my psychology sessions. The atmosphere is so much better than being on the ward or being stuck in a room where everything feels very clinical. In the garden, you can relax and talk more.
There’s also the physical side of all the workshops you can do in the garden, whether it’s making pottery, doing some painting, some drawing, or doing some gardening. Head Gardener Alex is very keen that all of us get involved, even those of us who can’t use our hands so well. She makes sure we can be a part of it. It’s helped my rehabilitation massively and the garden’s also big enough for us all to move around in and practice our wheelchair skills.
It’s absolutely brilliant. It’s just bliss. It’s so precious to me and I will always remember Horatio’s Garden for the rest of my life.