This beautiful summer weather we have in the UK right now has given me the opportunity to get out on my bike again with friends and family. However it also allows me to look back at my rehabilitation over the last 4 years, how fortunate I am to ride again and also how rehabilitation can be improved.
I often joke that while I’m no longer the chef I once was, I can still call myself a cyclist. When I had my accident, that was all in the balance. But now I’m back on the bike – albeit with some modifications – and getting on with my life, and that is thanks in part to being able to access some rehabilitation.
As I see it, that’s what recovery from major injury is all about: being the same me as best I can.
In 2017, a serious cycling accident left me fighting for my life at the side of the road. With multiple fractures, a liver in pieces and in a coma, the surgeons at Nottingham University Hospitals told my wife it would likely be months before I would be out of hospital. The fact that just seven weeks and nine operations later I was ready to be discharged, is testament to the phenomenal medical treatment I received from a whole range of professionals, as well as to my underlying fitness.
What I didn’t fully realise however, was that the most challenging part of my journey - long term rehabilitation - was still ahead of me, and would prove more gruelling than any training plan I’d ever done.
Once home, it quickly felt like I’d taken several steps backwards in terms of my recovery. In hospital I was receiving physiotherapy twice a day, as well as clinical psychology input to help me deal with the implications of my accident, but post-discharge this was limited to physiotherapy sessions once a week and visits from community nurses to change my dressings. I was shocked by the stark difference in the level of care, and I’ll be honest, those few months definitely took their toll mentally on both me and my family as we tried to adapt to my ‘new normal’.
Nonetheless, I’m one of the lucky ones. Despite life-changing injuries, I’ve been able to get back to work and have a good quality of life. Thanks to my legal case, I’ve been able to pay for ongoing physio to treat the brachial plexus nerve injury that means I can’t move my right arm, but I know others are not so fortunate – existing NHS rehabilitation services tend to be for neuro patients only and have long waiting lists.
That’s why I’m so excited to hear about the new NHS National Rehabilitation Centre (NRC) set to be built near Loughborough on the Stanford Hall Rehabilitation Estate. The intention is for the NRC to provide specialist rehabilitation for a wider mix of NHS patients, where cutting edge research and specialist rehabilitation expertise can be brought together under one roof to help patients like me transition from major trauma care and start rebuilding their lives.
To use a cycling analogy, it will be a bit like riding a road race as part of a peloton. Having all the specialist experts you need riding the rehabilitation journey alongside you, will help you optimize your progress and keep you moving forward. It sounds fantastic.
While I will always be enormously grateful to all the doctors, nurses, physios and other health professionals who looked after me, I really wish that this sort of specialist rehabilitation had been an option four years ago.
It’s true what they say about life changing experiences like this – you really do re-evaluate everything and question what the future holds. As I see it now, knowing that specialist clinical rehabilitation is available would give you hope in those dark times. Everyone needs a path back.
I’m on my bike again and facing forwards.
I’m delighted that the NRC will hopefully be ready to start treating patients in 2024.