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Inspire Us... |
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When I woke up I was in hospital. My legs didn’t work, my right arm wouldn’t move, half my face was collapsed and my left eye was pointing in towards my nose all the time. Apparently I had been knocked off my motorbike two and a half months earlier by a piece of human scum. The crash caused my right collar bone and top three right hand ribs to be broken, my lung to be punctured and serious multiple brain injuries. After I hit the tyre wall, my heart stopped and it had to be restarted by a doctor who very fortunately happened to be at the track at the same time as I was because there were some Superbike professional racers practicing there. After I had been taken to the Countess of Chester hospital I was anaesthetized for a week in the I.T.U ward in order to stop my brain from swelling up so much it caused even more damage. I didn’t wake up when the anaesthetic wore off, so my family woke me up by shouting at me for six hours non-stop. After I came round I could only blink my right eyelid. The whole of the rest of my body would not move at all. As if all this wasn’t enough I caught MRSA pneumonia which is a special sort of pneumonia which is resistant to most antibiotics and which kills people regularly. Doctors were down to the last but one set of antibiotics which they could try before I recovered. As I’m sure you can imagine I am very angry with the human scum who knocked me off my bike. I used to be extremely angry, now I’m just very angry. But as my friend Jon says, don’t get mad…get even. Things have got a lot better since then . On 25th September, I was signed off from physiotherapy by my neurological physiotherapist, who works at Solihull Hospital. My right shoulder, which hit the tyre wall with an impact force of five tons fourteen months earlier, is now completely better. You would never know that there was anything wrong with it. Bearing in mind that at first my right arm would not move at all, I think that this result is pretty damn excellent. I think that the watercolour painting I have done with Cate and the Carpentry I have done with Les and Alastair at Moor Green has really helped my shoulder get better. And I’ve managed to make two bird tables and painted some really nice pictures as well. Can’t be bad. My face has improved a lot. When I came out of Selly Oak Hospital I was treated by the Intermediate Care Team who are based at Solihull Hospital. Norma, my speech therapist there has lent me something called the TENS machine. TENS stands for Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation and it works by sending electrical current through the muscles on your face and this electrical activity attracts the facial cranial nerve, which was destroyed by the crash, to grow back to the muscles again. Everyone who has attended the Brain Injury Education sessions with Robin and Chris will know that brain cells like to talk to each other and electricity attracts them because they think that they can hear other brain cells talking to each other. People who don’t know me would never guess that half my face used to be collapsed. I can still only smile with the right side of my mouth, but since speaking to Cathy and Nina, my speech therapists at Moor Green. I have been stimulating several other muscles and soon I will be able to smile with both sides of my mouth. Both my tear ducts are now working as well. For eleven months I had to use artificial tears. It didn’t really matter that the right eye had no tears because it could blink properly, but I had to use artificial tears in my left eye, which couldn’t blink properly at all. The tear duct started working in my right eye back in March and the left eye’s tears came back a couple of months ago, as a result of using the TENS machine. The blinking in my left eye has also got a lot better as a result of the TENS machine. It’s not perfect yet, but I’m getting there, slowly but surely. The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do is to learn how to walk again. It has taken me thirteen months to do this. the reason I couldn’t walk was because of the damage which had been done to my cerebellum, the part of our brain which looks after things like walking and playing the piano, remembered things. Also the other week when I had my assessment. Robin told me about an excellent eye operation, which may fix my eyes. The nerves which operate the muscles on the outer edge of each of my eyeballs have been destroyed as a result of the crash, so that’s why you see me walking around Moor Green with a patch over one eye (the patch changes every so often). I’m hoping that these nerves will get better on their own, but if they don’t, perhaps this operation will be able to fix them. My GP has been really good. Some time ago he fixed my nose, which was permanently blocked up, by giving me an antibiotic liquid to take. He’s now in the process of fixing my ears, which have something wrong with them called ‘glue ear’. This is caused in children when they get a slap to the head. I think that hitting the tyre wall with an impact force of five tons probably counts as a slap to the head. I hope that after Christmas he may fix my ovaries as well, because at the moment I’m not ovulating, although I did ovulate briefly when my periods first started six months after the crash. He’s fixed everything I’ve asked him to fix so far and he’s a gynaecologist as well, so I think he will be able to do it. The thing I have learnt from this terrible situation is that all stimulation is good. The more stimulation you have, the faster you will get better. The things you have to remember about stimulation are:
The more frequent and intense the stimulation you use, and the longer it lasts, the faster you will get better. The way I learnt to walk again was to go a little bit further each day. To start with I could manage about 25 yards before I had to get back to my wheelchair again. Now I can walk for miles without even using a stick. Claire from the Intermediate Care Team at Solihull hospital showed me how to walk perfectly again and advised me to get a stick to help me walk. My walking is now 98% of what it was before the crash happened. What was particularly good was a few weeks ago when it became automatic and I didn’t have to concentrate really hard on every step I took. I’ve had loads of help. The Countess of Chester I.T.U ward. Solihull hospital Intermediate Care Team, Helen my neurological physiotherapist and the staff at Moor Green have all been really good. My parents and my partner Chris have been excellent. The following paragraph is something that Evil Tony said to me not so long ago. Since being at Moor Green I’ve met loads of really nice people. I wish the ********* had never happened, but I’m really glad to have met all these people, even if the circumstances have been less than perfect.
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