While my ‘everyday leg’ getting me walking again was a massive moment, equally as big was when I got a leg that looked like a real leg. Some of the guys at Headley Court were completely comfortable wearing shorts with their titanium legs on show, but I never was. Before the blast I’d always been a girly girl and I wanted to have a leg that made me look and feel as normal as possible, so the prosthetics team had one made for me. As soon as it arrived and some of the other guys saw how lifelike it was, they straight away wanted one of their own. It was what we all jokingly called ‘Leg Envy’ – when one person gets one type of leg then everyone else wants one too! I’ve seen blokes argue over special ski legs and when one said to the other, ‘Why haven’t I got that type of ski leg?’ the answer was, ‘Because you don’t ski, mate!’ It’s light-hearted banter but it also helps keep you motivated and interested in what you’re doing, how your body is, and how your legs can improve function and what you can achieve.
My first skin-coloured leg wasn’t even that realistic looking but it caused quite a stir. Everyone wanted to have a look at it, see what it was made of and how natural it looked. But then one of the lads was getting married and as he was Scottish, he wanted to wear a kilt and so the prosthetics team specially made him an HD or ‘high definition’ leg. It was incredible and just like the real thing, even down to the veins, skin texture and tiny hairs. When I saw the pictures of his wedding – as the kilt covered the top of his stump you never would have known – I had ‘leg envy’ of my own. ‘I am getting one of those HD legs made,’ I thought. This was only a few months in at Headley and the prosthetics team kept saying you have to wait as you first have to stabilise with the leg you’ve got, not rush onto another leg, but I couldn’t wait and so I forced them into ordering one for me, costing £15,000. When it arrived, it was just incredible. I stared at it for ages and I was almost afraid to touch as it was just so lifelike, even down to having tiny little veins, freckles and a few moles. It was, and still is, my favourite leg – if you can’t see the join where it is attached to my stump then there is no way you would ever guess it’s not my real leg.
I also got a ‘water leg’, which I can use for showering and swimming. As you’d guess, it’s just like my everyday leg, except it’s waterproof. That enabled me to start using showers again, regaining another part of my independence. Funnily enough, my HD leg allowed me to do Captain Kate Philp a small good turn after all she’d done for me. After I posted up some photos of myself wearing it, she contacted me via Facebook as she was interested in getting one herself and wanted to know my views. I told her how life changing it had been and how I’d really recommend it, as it had given an extra boost to my confidence. Later, I saw a photograph of her and she had one as well, so I like to think I’ve been able to help her a little bit after she was so good to me. We were both in such a unique position as females in the Army and it’s so important to support to each other.
As I grew in confidence I started taking care of myself again. I had make-up tattooed on and then some fillers, which has so far cost me £3,000. I also started having Botox because my eye had dropped slightly, due to my facial injuries, and it puts it back into position. I also felt that all I went through had aged me prematurely. While I recovered from telogen effluvium and my hair grew, I also tried a dazzling array of new hairstyles that set me back £5,000 in total, although I’ve now got a full head of my own hair again. I also decided to go under the knife again, using some more of my compensation money and so I booked to have a boob job in February 2012 – just twelve weeks before I ran the London Marathon. I didn’t tell anyone beforehand as I knew my mum would worry about me undergoing any type of procedure after all my body had been through. I just needed to do it for me. I’d lost so much weight that my breasts had lost volume. They weren’t saggy, it was much worse than that: they resembled two deflated, wrinkly balloons. I’d scoop up the empty tissue into minimiser bras to disguise it, but without them I was quite badly disfigured.
The surgeon recommended I have a natural look so I went from a deflated C-cup to a D-cup to put back the volume I’d lost, costing £6,500. With hindsight it wasn’t the wisest move so close to the marathon, but I was sure, as I normally recovered so quickly from my ops, that I would be fine for the big day. The operation was a great success and when I unwrapped the bandages, I loved my new boobs as they just looked ‘normal’. ‘That’s another box ticked for getting back me,’ I thought. They looked so natural that if you hadn’t known about my weight loss, you wouldn’t have realised I’d had a boob job at all.
I had two weeks of rest after the operation but then I made a foolhardy decision: I agreed to go ski-bobbing (like a bike that has two skis instead of wheels) with Blesma and fourteen other injured lads in Austria. I didn’t tell them I’d just had implants because I knew they wouldn’t let me go as your implants can slip until they settle in. I didn’t want to miss out on any opportunity as every goal I accomplished was another brick in rebuilding my shattered inner confidence.
For the first few days I had an amazing time but I kept falling off spectacularly as they hit ridiculous speeds of up to 60 miles an hour. Then as I came off during one run and ended up rolling around in the snow, I actually felt one of my implants slip. I thought: ‘Ouch!’ but put it to the back of my mind until I returned to my hotel room. Later, when I got back, I looked in the mirror and to my horror I realised that something was very wrong as my breast looked wonky, flat and out of shape. I was a bit freaked out but I thought: ‘That wasn’t like that before.’ I had a good feel of it and realised one of the implants had flipped over inside me. After a wave of initial panic I thought: ‘What can I do?’ I decided I’d have to move them round myself so I took some paracetamol and gritted my teeth. I’d been through worse in my life and I just knew I had to get on with it. After a few seconds of tugging and pushing I managed to manipulate the implant around underneath my skin and flip it back over into its correct position. You aren’t supposed to be able to flip them like pancakes, but I’d clearly messed the operation up by doing something so strenuous. I was shaking and the sweat was forming on my forehead but I felt a wave of euphoria as I realised I was able to move it back into position. I then had to do the other breast, which also, thankfully, went back into place.
Afterwards I just thought: ‘You absolute idiot!’ I couldn’t believe I’d been so stupid but that didn’t stop me from continuing to ski-bob the following day. During the trip, the David Guetta song ‘Titanium’ came out and whenever it was played everyone would get their prosthetics out, so it became our anthem. In the end I won a silver award for passing the skills needed for the sport and even a special award for the ‘Best Style’ – which was for my technique rather than my outfit. But my competitive spirit had cost me dearly at the same time for it had completely botched up my new breasts and I knew this would be the start of yet more surgery to correct my foolhardiness. Still, I was determined to carry on with my sporting prowess and the next stop was the London Marathon that I’d promised to do all those months before from my hospital bed.
The day was dawning and I was ready for it.
CHAPTER TWELVE
MARATHON
My breasts were in agony from the moment I came back from the ski trip. I knew I should probably have gone to see a doctor, but I was scared that they would tell me not to do the marathon, which was only weeks away. The pain became so much and my chest was so sore, I decided to wing it without doing any running training. I convinced myself it would be fine as I was reaching the peak of my rehab at Headley Court.
While a big part of doing the marathon was the physical challenge, something – or more accurately someone – else, also massively motivated me as well. For years I’d felt I failed Milly as a mother and I desperately wanted her to be proud of me. Doing the marathon was to achieve something for her, as well as myself. So while not being able to do the practice I wanted was a blow, I was determined to make it over the finish line no matter what, even if t
hat meant crawling on my hands and knees.
There was another reason why I wasn’t able to run anyway. The final, vital, piece of equipment I needed in order to take part in the race was still being fabricated: a spanking-new custom leg with electric blue tiger stripes on it. Headley Court had agreed to make me my first-ever titanium running blade, just like you see Paralympians such as Richard Whitehead wearing. When it arrived, I was almost squealing with excitement. It was a bit like opening a longed-for Christmas gift as a child. I’d chosen it months before when I’d suffered from a massive bout of ‘leg envy’ at Headley Court on seeing someone who was further down the line in their rehabilitation wearing one in the prosthetics department. As soon as I saw him running around the track I’d said: ‘I’d really like one of those legs.’ So I had fittings for one, trialled a test version, and since then I’d chosen the pattern I wanted on the socket from a selection of swatches, like choosing curtain fabric. I had to go down to the prosthetics department at Headley to get it, and my occupational therapist was yapping away and all I wanted to say was: ‘Yeah, can you just please go and get my leg!’ Then she disappeared out in the back room for ages, as there must have been loads of prosthetic legs to sift through, before carrying it into the room.
As soon as I saw it ‘in the flesh’, so to speak, I thought: ‘Ooh, that looks brilliant!’ and I couldn’t wait to get on it. It was weird putting the leg on as it’s incredibly light, but it fitted me like a glove. As soon as I was helped to my feet I was way too cocky and thought to myself: ‘Well, this can’t be too hard, I’ve seen people running on these.’
My occupational therapist warned me: ‘Don’t just go running off, Hannah, as you need to learn to control it. We have to learn to walk on it first.’ But it was too late.
‘Pah, I can do this, how hard can it be? I’ve run before,’ I thought. Immediately I tried to sprint off, boinged sideways and ended up flat on my backside in an undignified heap, thinking, ‘Thank God I fell on my bottom and not my boobs – I should probably have listened.’ After dusting off my pride I got straight back up and tried again as attempting 26.2 miles without the blade simply wasn’t an option.
Basically, you have to treat the blade as a coiled spring, which is going to propel you forward more than a leg will. It’s so springy that if you don’t know what you are doing, it can actually ping you off in any direction like a Pogo stick. So it’s all about controlling the power and that’s what I didn’t do with my first bounce. I learned which muscles to engage, the way in which you need to hold yourself and even how you use your other foot, as the blade is set in such a way it’s like being on tiptoes so you have to run on the ball of the other foot to balance yourself. It was like learning to run from scratch all over again, using a completely different technique to the one I’d used all my life.
Within that first hour-long session I started to grasp the basics and technique and I was literally up and running. On day two I had a massive fall in front of all the lads when I tried to race someone. We were trying sprints up and down the gym and I was quite good and quite impressed with myself, so I got overconfident and I had quite a spectacular fall, completely face down. I did that really embarrassed motion of picking myself up at lightning speed and walking off – I didn’t want the lads to see it had hurt so much, it brought tears to my eyes. I was also a bit panicked that my implant might pop out of position again, but I checked in the ladies loos and thank God, it hadn’t. Falling hurts, so you learn really quickly not to, for an even greater fear was if I fell and damaged my stump, I could write myself off my leg and then I wouldn’t be walking, let alone running, for weeks. My marathon dream would lie in tatters.
From that point on I used the blades for one hour every day for the next six weeks. Using muscles in a whole different way is so exhausting it quickly became clear I wouldn’t be able to build up the stamina to do the whole route on my blade. I decided to divide the marathon into sections, running some of it on the blade and then alternating by power walking on my high-intensity prosthetic, which has an inbuilt shock absorber. I also realised I needed someone who was fit and able, someone I would listen to and not fly off the handle with, to support me. So when a high-ranking officer at my barracks offered to run with me, I agreed. As well as motivating me, he’d carry whichever leg I wasn’t wearing at the time sticking out of the top of his backpack. We also decided he’d push my wheelchair for the whole route, just in case things really unravelled and I couldn’t run or walk any more.
The truth is the sight of that wheelchair was enough to keep me on my feet. I never wanted to be that fat, invisible woman who sat inside it again. I just thought: ‘After everything I’ve been through I might be winging it but there’s no way I won’t do it.’ We did some long walks together in the lead-up to the race to find my pace and apart from that the only real preparation I made was researching how I could up my calorie intake before and during the run. Because of my gastric bypass I was unable to eat huge bowls of carbs or take on high amounts of sugar or I would suffer from Dumping syndrome and fall ill midway through. So we did loads of research and found a really high-calorie gel made up of whey and protein that gave me the calories I’d need without the sugar.
We stayed in a hotel the night before and I barely slept a wink, as I thought no one really expected me to complete it. On the morning I couldn’t eat, as I was so nervous – I had such butterflies, I think I went to the loo ten times! One of the biggest ‘prep’ things I did before the race was to put on some Spanx control pants. I had to wear them because the loose skin around my tummy, due to my massive weight loss, wobbled and rubbed so much it would have chafed. I also put on two sports bras to hide my wonky boobs, as big boobs are a curse to exercisers! And I managed to hide it well under a Blesma T-shirt so nobody would have known.
I saw Milly briefly with my family while I collected my pass to get into the ‘holding area’ at Greenwich Park. My nerves were soon replaced by a steely determination as one of my family members, I can’t remember who, said: ‘If you have to drop out, don’t feel like it’s the end of the world. We’ll still be proud of you, even if you get 10 miles round.’
I smiled politely but inside I thought: ‘How dare you!’ They did me a favour as that turned the nerves in my belly into a fiery determination – I wanted to make them eat their words.
I gave Milly a kiss and said: ‘I’ll be looking out for you all the way round. Make sure you are waiting for me at the finish line so we can go and get my medal.’ She was so excited and when she said: ‘I’ll see you there, Mummy,’ that fired me up even more.
I was waiting, nervous as hell, at Greenwich Park, where everybody congregated in preparation, waiting to be called to the start line, when a really enthusiastic Blesma lady said: ‘Oh, I forgot to mention, we’ve got you an interview on the BBC.’
I said: ‘Oh God!’ as I hadn’t put on any make-up, my hair was scraped back in a harsh plait and I didn’t feel ready to go on TV at all. The next thing I knew, I was thrust in front of the camera for the first time in my life. I can’t even remember what I said. Then it was straight on to the start line and I waved goodbye to Milly, thinking, ‘Just watch me do this,’ and the race began.
It took ages to cross the start line as there was just a sea of people in front. It took the first few miles for me to get into a rhythm and then I had two strategies: the first of which was to harness my competitive spirit and pick people off from the back all the way through. So I’d spot someone in the crowd as my target and then push myself forward. A few miles in I remember seeing a familiar figure in the crowd: James ‘Arg’ Argent from The Only Way Is Essex, who looked like he was struggling a bit. I love TOWIE, but I still had a chuckle to myself as I cruised past him.
As the miles clocked up, I ran past a lot of women who were really overweight and I was motivated to pass them as it was like leaving behind the person I used to be. That’s not to say I thought ill of them; in fact as I went past them I thought to myself:
‘Good on you! I’ve been there and everyone has got to start somewhere.’ I recognised in them a lot of myself as I was once that fat person plodding along, and look how far I’d come.
I remember shouting encouragement: ‘Come on, keep going!’ to one woman who I really identified with as she was pushing herself hard and she was feeling the pain. When you are big you are quite self-conscious of running as everything jiggles, so I felt proud of them, even though I didn’t know them, as they were doing something about it while doing something for charity as well.
My other tactic was to do as much as I could on my running blade, particularly on the faster parts of the course, such as the long flat Mall. But I had to change legs regularly as I wasn’t proficient enough to use it for hours on end. For each leg change I’d sit on the kerb, whip my leg off and then put the other one on. I have to admire Paralympians as it’s a real skill to use it in such a way that you can do the whole 26 miles on one leg.
The first five miles of the race went by in a blur. All my family were watching and they travelled around London to shout to me at different points. Milly was shouting: ‘Mummy! Mummy!’ and I took delight in passing by, running with my empty wheelchair alongside me, giving them a wave. But as well as Milly, a total stranger, Clare Lomas, also inspired me to keep going. She was called The Bionic Woman as she competed that year in a bionic suit to help her walk as she was paralysed. I thought she was incredible. The crowds were also amazing. Strangers who had seen me earlier on the BBC started shouting to me: ‘Go on, Hannah, you can do it!’ Blesma were also at different points so there was always someone to cheer you on every mile you clocked up.
Never Broken Page 17