My name is Paul, and I am 62 years old. When I had my accident, I was retired, but before that I worked as an IT Director, managing data centres for a financial services firm. I had worked at that company since I was 16 years old.
Just over two months ago, I had a paragliding accident in France whilst I was on holiday. I had been paragliding for about two and a half years previously. When I took off, for whatever reason, my wing didn’t completely fill with air like it was meant to. I was going down a mountain at quite a quick rate and I couldn’t make the landing field. So, I ended up crashing into a tree, with the hope that my wing would collapse over the top of the tree, and I would just be left hanging there. But that didn’t happen, and I guess I broke my back on the way down
I was airlifted to Grenoble Hospital in France, where I spent the next month. Due to my accident, I smashed my L2 and L3, and broke T10. After having surgery on my back in France, I was flown back to Surrey Hospital in the UK. There was nothing wrong with Surrey Hospital, but they don’t have a spinal injury unit, so they didn’t know what to do with me. I was in a pain management unit, without any physio. I was pretty much bedridden for two weeks until I got moved to the London Spinal Cord Injury Centre.
I arrived at the spinal centre on Thursday, and by the time I was given a wheelchair on Saturday I came out to see Horatio’s Garden. I just like being out in the garden. Tracey, the Garden Administrator, gets me involved in most of the activities, and I’ll have a go at anything. It’s a space just to be able to get outside. It’s great to have the resources and all the volunteers in the garden.
The garden provides a great social space. I’m not going to become an artist, or a potter, or anything like that, I don’t think. But there’s a social aspect to all the activities: you’re with some of the other patients and some of the volunteers, who have all been helpful. It’s really healthy to chat to other people. I will also always remember the bright colours of the garden room and the pods, along with the curvature of the garden paths.
My injury has completely changed my life. As much as anything, it’s changed my family’s life. Mobility wise, I don’t think I’m going to have what I had before. There’s always going to be complications with climbing upstairs, things like that in the future, I guess. I’m not going to be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life though. I know I’m not going to be as fit as I was historically, and you can ask anyone and they always say we can’t tell how much better you’re going to get, you just have to suck it and see, keep trying, and see where you get to. There is potentially a limit, I was just asking the physio this. She said it just depends on the individual. If you were fit and healthy before that’s good, and I was, but you just don’t know how far you can push yourself, it just depends on what’s happening inside your legs, to your nerves basically.
My next goal is to get home. Longer term, I really don’t know, I’ve just got to continue my recovery. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, and I’ve just got to see how able I get. But my advice to any new patients at the London Spinal Cord Injury Centre would be to just get out into the garden. It doesn’t have to be warm; it doesn’t have to be sunny necessarily. Just enjoy the space I think, the social space. When you get your relatives here, the last place they want to sit is next to a hospital bed. Get them outside or get them into the garden room or the pods, that’s what they’re for.
