by Ed Jackson
But, without realising it, by my early twenties I had become completely consumed by sport. Yes, I had other interests, such as video games or nights out, but neither of these was particularly fulfilling or required my entire focus. For me, distractions only work if they have a productive outcome, as well as passing the time.
Therefore, in my mid-twenties, I decided to start a distance learning degree in Business Leadership and Management, which was a great distraction from sport. It calmed the emotional extremes of my daily life. No matter how badly I’d played at the weekend or how long my shoulder injury was taking to heal, I had another interest to take my mind off rugby. And that’s the kind of distraction I needed now.
It had all gone quiet further down the hospital corridor. Was this a good or bad outcome? I didn’t want to ask; the medical staff had more important things to deal with. Maybe someone would let me know tomorrow. I tried to concentrate on my film. A gun-toting man was driving a truck the wrong way down a freeway. Cars spun out of its way, crashing into barriers.
Will Lois leave me if I stay like this? No one would blame her if she does …
I pinched my eyes closed and tried to get back to my film. It was no good; the thoughts about my future swirled inside my head, and even the film’s gunfire and bomb blasts were doing little to divert me away from them. Why hadn’t anything moved yet? I was no medic, but I knew the longer there was no movement, the less likely there would be any. I’d read about spinal shock, where there is a loss of movement because the body shuts down to protect the spinal cord. But that only lasts for five or six days. This was my sixth night in hospital; I was past that point now.
I shot another signal down to my finger and stared at it. Staccato clips of a turf war getting out of control exploded on to my screen. I tried to time the signal to my finger with the ammunition rounds being shot. Nothing. None of my friends and family had said it, but they must have thought it – days had passed, and still no movement. Trapped in my spiralling thoughts, it was time to pull out my best distraction.
Pausing the film, I opened the notes on my iPad and began recording the second entry in my diary via voice command.
‘It’s been six days since my accident and I’ve got to say that I didn’t expect the evenings to last so long …’
It was comforting to hear the words aloud. I’d never kept a diary before, so I’d been amazed on my fifth night in hospital that speaking out loud about my day, transferring these thoughts out of my mind, gave me some peace. They were no longer trapped inside of me, unable to find an outlet or conclusion. They were pushed away, and I was left able to rest. Before this discovery, I couldn’t turn my brain off, so I’d been unable to fall asleep.
When I’d finished my entry, the fizzing in my head subsided. I felt very much in the present, not missing the past or worrying about the future – it was time to sleep.
There is not much of a bedtime routine for a quadriplegic in intensive care; I didn’t even have my teeth brushed as I had difficulty swallowing. So, I turned my iPad off and closed my eyes.
BeepBeepBeepBeep.
My eyes flicked open and I gasped in a lungful of air.
It had happened again. The machine that monitored my heart rate had thought I was going into cardiac arrest.
A nurse popped her head around the door. ‘Everything okay in here?’
‘I’m not dying, don’t worry. Are you sure there’s no way you can change it?’
‘Sorry, Ed, but we can’t override the settings. We would if we could.’
I tried to push down the anger I felt at rarely being able to sleep for more than a few minutes. Every time I fell asleep, my heart rate would dip under 40 beats per minute (bpm), which is alarming for a machine that is monitoring your blood pressure. It thinks you are about to die. Most people’s heart rates range between 60 and 100bpm when they fall asleep. But, as I was a trained athlete, years of intensive cardio had meant that mine dipped below 40bpm, which set the machine off constantly throughout the night.
I tried to look at it in a different way. Rather than feeling angry at my heartbeat dipping below 40bpm, I instead tried to be grateful that at the time of the accident I was physically fit. I might not have survived otherwise.
‘At least I got forty minutes that time.’
I closed my eyes.
The clatter of heavy footsteps woke me. I blinked and scrunched my eyes at the harshness of the electric lights. I tried to lift myself off the bed.
Why can’t I move? Am I still asleep? Where am I?
‘Sorry to wake you, but it’s time for your checks,’ one of the nurses said.
With a rush, everything that had happened in the last week came back to me. One of the cruellest things was that, just for a moment, I had been back to normal and now I had to process what had happened all over again.
On each side of me were two nurses and the fifth one stabilised my head and neck. It had to be midnight as my last check had been at ten and they happened every two hours. That meant I’d had thirty minutes sleep – my blood pressure hadn’t dipped below 40bpm yet.
‘One, two, three.’
I tried to make myself as light as possible, although I knew there was nothing I could do to help them. As I weighed eighteen stone, it took five of them to safely roll me on to my side. They began to inspect my shoulder blades, bum, thighs, calves and heels for the first signs of pressure sores. These are the creeping enemy of anyone who has to lie in the same position all day. If the nurses didn’t check for them and treat them quickly, layers of tissue could die and have to be surgically removed. With that in mind and however annoying it was, I was happy for them to inspect away.
When they were finished, the nurses returned me to my back but angled me slightly on to my left, so the pressure was taken off the right side of my body for the next two hours. This pleased me as this direction was away from the door, which meant the light from the corridor was slightly fainter and there was a better chance I might get some sleep – you had to take the small wins when you could. I tried to focus on this as I willed myself to relax.
‘All done, we’ll see you at two.’
I tried to get back to sleep but my neck ached and my thoughts had started up again.
When I was 23, one of my best friends, Tom, died. There had been three of us – Tom, Rich and me – best friends since the first day of secondary school and into adulthood. Whatever we went through – exam panics, dating dramas, the slow climb of growing from boy to man – we were there for each other. And then Tom died, and there was only two of us left.
I had been in Croatia with Lois and my family when it had happened. Every year we went on holiday to the same remote fishing village and, by the third day of our trip, we had completely relaxed in the familiar seaside setting.
The call from Tom’s sister had come through when I had been getting ready for dinner. Lois had found me sitting in the shower, fully clothed, completely unaware that my nose was bleeding from the stress the news had already placed on my body.
The following months were the toughest of my life. Losing a friend who was just at the start of his life, the unfairness of it all, plagued me. I could have stopped living, hid myself away, let grief take me. But whenever I thought of taking that route, I would imagine what Tom would have said about it: ‘Feeling sorry for yourself isn’t going to change anything, you’ve still got a life to lead.’ So I learnt ways to cope. I had to, as I knew I wouldn’t come out intact if I didn’t. At my lowest moments I always thought of Tom, nothing would be as bad as when he was taken away from us. I had survived that; it had even made me stronger. And so I knew I would survive this too.
I closed my eyes again.
I was drowning.
I couldn’t breathe. I was back in the pool.
My eyes flicked open.
It’s okay, you’re not in the pool, you’re in hospital.
I breathed in but the air wouldn’t go all the way in; something was blocking it. The drownin
g sensation stayed with me. I needed to cough, clear the mucus that had built up and gone down the wrong way. I couldn’t turn on to my side. I hadn’t even got the strength in my chest to cough. So the phlegm just sat there, blocking my airway. I needed the cough machine to clear my lungs and I needed a nurse to fit it.
I made a gurgling sound, trying to call for help. I couldn’t press the buzzer, for obvious reasons, so I made the gurgling noise again. My eyes darted over to the door. I was choking now, and my panic rose. Come on … come on …
Footsteps were coming down the corridor and I hoped that they didn’t turn off into one of the other rooms. I made the loudest noise I could, which was a mixture of a strangled frog and the air being released from a balloon.
The footsteps quickened and in a few seconds the nurse had pushed a suction tube down my throat to clear the first lot of phlegm. She then pulled the cough machine’s mask over my face. I stared up at her as the machine pumped two lots of air into my lungs and then sharply sucked the mucus out of me. It was an odd sensation and it may have sounded disgusting – but don’t be rude about my new best friend. Me and cough machine were inseparable.
It’s overwhelming to think about what a simple thing like coughing means to your body. Willing myself to fall asleep, I tried to think about how amazing the human body is, but my mind kept on drifting back to the fact that I couldn’t even cough.
I took myself back in time to the Pacific Coast Highway. Lois and I had pushed our way through the forest; it had smelled of moss after the rain had cleared some of the heat. I’d known that in a moment, tired but happy, that we would burst out onto the cliff face overlooking the sea.
I closed my eyes.
Alarm … Roll … Alarm. Drowning … Alarm … Roll.
‘Morning,’ Lois said, as she bounded into my room. ‘How was your night?’
Bloody hell, it was good to see Lois.
Mum and Lois were keeping me company on my seventh afternoon in intensive care.
My mum is supermum. She will out-mum even the best of them. She lived the farthest from the hospital, yet she would be the first to arrive, and last to leave. She would also bring half the contents of the M&S food hall with her, even though I couldn’t eat anything. When she couldn’t be in the room with me, she would try to tempt the medical staff with a spare smoked ham sandwich or mozzarella pasta bowl. Mum dealt with my accident by being constantly by my side, while still trying to care for everyone else within a fifteen-metre radius of me. I loved her for it.
Mum was sitting on the chair to my right, nearest the door, and Lois was on my left. They were talking about Lois’s upcoming netball tour and I was only half listening as I shot messages down my limbs, trying to get something to work.
I took a sharp breath. There was a twitch; I’d felt my right index finger twitch. It was the smallest of movements and I thought I must have imagined it. I was so tired from lack of proper sleep that sometimes my vision blurred and rippled at the edges. I did it again – it definitely twitched.
‘Mum, look at my finger. Look, look!’
I closed my eyes and sent the command.
The squeals from both my mum and Lois confirmed what I was hoping for.
‘Try your middle finger,’ Lois said.
I gave it a go.
‘Never mind, darling,’ Mum said. ‘It will happen soon.’
I gave it another go.
Lois squealed.
I stared at my finger in disbelief. I wiggled them both at the same time and off they went, doing exactly what I told them to do. If I’d been able to, I would have hopped off the bed and done a victory lap.
Lois and Mum leant in to hug me at the same time. I took a deep breath in. This morning, I had no working fingers and now I had two. The tears silently spilled down my cheeks as I broke out into a wide grin.
Chapter 3
Wiggling
Eight days earlier …
I ran my gaze over the lunchtime spread. It was the first hot day of the year, the one I’d been waiting for, and I’d been invited over to our family friends, Laura and Philip’s house for the afternoon.
‘Well, I think that’s everything,’ Laura said, as she popped a bowl of chutney and another of mayonnaise onto the long outdoor table. ‘Help yourselves!’
I didn’t need to be asked twice. I put down the signed Fleetwood Mac vinyl, Rumours, which Philip had been showing me, and moved over to the table.
I love my food and, to keep my weight at eighteen stone, I had to eat around four to five thousand calories a day. The one catch was that they had to be good calories, not eleven bags of crisps, a Dominos and a side of chicken wings. Although these did occasionally make the menu.
‘So, your dad tells me you’ve been signed with the Dragons again,’ Diane said, as she passed me a plate of baked salmon.
‘I’ve got another two-year contract. It’s a great bunch of lads, and it means I won’t have to move again for a while.’
Lois and I loved our life in Wales. I’m as English sounding as they come, so it had taken a few weeks for the Welsh boys to warm to me and not go quiet when I entered the changing room. But I’d got there in the end after they saw that I worked hard and took training seriously.
‘I’ve been in Wales for two years now,’ I added, as I tore off a piece of baguette, still warm from the oven. ‘In a year I’ll qualify for residency. I could even play for Wales, if they’d have me!’
‘Do you know the Welsh National Anthem, then?’
I leant over and speared my fork into another jacket potato. ‘I’d say so. Although any Welsh person might disagree. My teammates say I massacre it.’ I grinned. ‘I belt it out anyway just to annoy them.’
My stepmum leant over. ‘Ed and Lois have also got the wedding coming up next summer.’
‘In Tuscany, isn’t it?’ Diane asked, sipping her water.
I nodded. ‘Yes, in July. We’ve been together seven years now; it’s just taken us a while to get around to organising it.’
‘And that hasn’t been easy to do, has it, Ed?’ my stepmum said, leaning back in her chair.
‘Things run at a different pace over there. The Italians have a word, domani, which means tomorrow. Whenever we call the suppliers to check how things are going, it’s always “Domani, domani.” We have a secret weapon now, though.’
‘What’s that?’ Diane asked.
‘I have a friend who plays rugby for Palma and he’s married to an Italian lady. She’s started calling them for us. And “domani” doesn’t really fly with Marina. You wouldn’t mess with her.’
They both laughed before the conversation naturally turned to Diane’s recent trip to Florence.
I looked up at the sun and took a moment to feel its warmth. I’m an outdoors person. No matter what the weather is, you’ll find me outside. I can’t stand being cooped up – I’m a free-range chicken. I stretched out my legs and felt a twinge in my calf muscle. After sitting at the table for close to an hour, I was beginning to feel restless. I glanced over to the stone steps that traced their way down to the other section of the garden. I knew they led to Laura and Philip’s swimming pool and I was eager to try it out.
‘This has been great, thank you very much,’ I said to Laura, while patting my belly in appreciation. ‘I think it’s time for a swim …’
It was Easter weekend, eight days after my accident, and I was waiting for the last hour of the early morning to tick by before my visitors would arrive. I’d had a bed bath and a suppository, which is pretty much as spruced-up as I could get in intensive care. I knew that when Mum arrived, she’d pop some bunny ears on my head and my morning’s preparations would be complete.
My spirits had been lifted by my wiggling fingers and the opportunity to suck on a bit of chocolate – my first solid food since the lunchtime meal I’d eaten before the accident. Yesterday, I had proudly shown my new doctor the two twitching fingers and he’d been genuinely pleased for me, but it hadn’t changed his prognosis
. It was still very unlikely that I would walk again – a finger was not a toe.
My family had spent the afternoon celebrating anyway, me along with them. We had cracked open our Easter eggs early, and they had talked about how far I had come and how I would be up and about in no time. I had smiled along with them, caught up in their enthusiasm. We’d all moved on to focusing on my big toe now. And that poor little guy, marooned at the far end of my body, was not responding as expected. Not a tremor or a twitch.
During the long night, I had thought about what my doctor had said and the situation had begun to sink in. I understood the potential implications of my injury, even if I refused to accept them. Staying positive was essential. However, the expectations of my family and friends weren’t quite matching up with what the doctors were saying. I understood that doctors are inherently cautious; it’s their job to ensure their patients understand what they are facing. I also knew that my family was going to be overly optimistic and I needed that optimism to help keep me in a positive frame of mind. But the optimism had turned on me – it had begun to feel like pressure. There was now an expectation that I would make a full recovery, and quickly. I felt that if I didn’t do this, then I would be letting them all down. I would throw them back to what they were facing a week ago.
At 3 a.m. I’d had a revelation. I had to concentrate on short-term goals rather than long-term outcomes. I had to be happy that I could wiggle my finger, not sad that my legs didn’t move. I’d still keep the faith that I would make further progress, but I wouldn’t beat myself up if it didn’t happen every day. All I could do was try.
One of my favourite nurses popped her head around the door. ‘We have a plan. Are you in?’
I grinned at her. ‘Whatever it is, I’m in.’
‘Good, I’ll be back in ten minutes.’