My story started when I was just five years old.
I was kicked in the shin at school, which triggered an extremely rare condition: Lymphangiomatosis of the limb, which in basic terms, sent my lymphatic system into overdrive and dissolved the bone and skin in my leg.
At the time of my diagnosis, there were only seven recorded cases in the world, and no cure.
I was referred to the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital in Birmingham where I was the first non-cancer patient to receive a ‘Proximal Tibial Endoprosthetic Replacement’, but simply put, a metal bone replacement in an attempt to save my leg. It worked to a degree, but as I was a growing child I had to go back every five weeks to have an operation to manually extend the metal bone.
By the age of 15, I was in a bad way – I had missed so much school and so struggled to associate with kids my own age, I was on an immense amount of medication, and I was in constant pain. With my parents’ support I made the decision to have the leg amputated, and two weeks later my leg was gone.
It was a groundbreaking moment for me – I’d been empowered by the surgeons and my family to allow me to make the decision, I was suddenly able to get around pain-free and I was able to go back to school.
Back in school and in the last year of GCSEs, I was told by one of my teachers in a dismissive way that I would be lucky to get two GCSEs due to the amount of school I’d missed.
However, with the support of other teachers, who know that I wouldn’t take that kind of assumption lying down, I came out with 11 GSCEs. Perhaps it was the beginning of the type of person I would become, and I went on to do my A-Levels and started working in administration for the local authority’s youth services.
My rehabilitation was non-existent. It was a very different time medically and so once my leg had been removed, I was left to get on with my life. There was nothing to help me to overcome the physical and mental impact of the long-term trauma I had been through.
The turning point for me was sport.
If it wasn’t for sport, I wouldn’t be who I am today, where I am today, or doing what I am today. It was through learning about rehabilitation after sports injuries and other disabled people sharing their experiences that I was able to reflect on my own rehabilitation. That’s why we need to make sure that the opportunities are there for all people with disabilities, and that the right rehabilitation mechanisms are in place.
It was a chance meeting in Asda when I was 19 that changed my life. I was approached by this man who explained he was starting up a sledge ice hockey club at the new National Ice Centre in Nottingham and said: ‘you look like a guy who could hit someone, fancy coming and giving sledge hockey a go?’ This still makes me smile.
I’d never been into sport and didn’t know how it was going to work even getting changed around other people with my injury. But I turned up, and that’s where I met Richard Whitehead and Gary Farmer, who over time became like family – Richard actually drove me to my wedding, and I still work with Gary today.
A year later all three of us were selected for Great Britain and three years later in 2006 we were playing in the Paralympics in Turin. It was absolutely surreal to be there – we had a police motorcade from the accommodation to the airport, and had gone from playing with a couple of hundred people watching us to being in a stadium of 8,000 people.
There wasn’t the investment in paralympic sport then for us to play professionally, so we all still had full-time jobs, and so we played in the Paralympics, and then went back to work the next Monday. We were training up in Hull twice a week from 10.30pm until the early hours of the morning, and then getting up and going to work. It was an absolute passion.
From 2010 to 2013 I was selected to be captain of the team, and one of my proudest achievements was working with charities Help For Heroes and Battle Back (a Military rehabilitation programme). Together we worked to train and develop veterans in sledge hockey, and eventually 50% of the GB team were veterans.
I saw the value then of bringing military veterans and civilians with disabilities together – a key part of the work taking place at the NRC. It was also the first time I got to see Headley Court – the former military rehabilitation centre in Surrey – and realised what rehabilitation after a life-changing illness or injury could look like.
In 2013 I retired from international sport, although I played for the Sheffield Steel Kings for a bit until I fell out of my wheelchair at home in 2018 and severed two of the three major ligaments in my shoulder and needed extensive surgery.
It was the end of my sporting career, but the beginning of so much more – in 2022 I left the local authority where I had been all this time to join Nimbus Disability – a social enterprise company based in Derby which is an international leader in access for disabled people from live music to national events to theme parks. It’s allowed me to take all of my experience and use it to have a tangible impact on the lives of people living with disabilities.
I was delighted to be asked to be involved in the development of the first NHS National Rehabilitation Centre. Having had my own experiences of a lack of rehabilitation, and having seen what Headley Court and now the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre near Loughborough is achieving, we are missing a trick when it comes to post-medical rehab.
The medical system works wonders, but the mechanisms for post-medical healing in the following weeks, months and years are crucial too, and in many cases aren’t there at the moment. Then we need to help disabled people into employment in a positive way.
I don’t think the NRC should achieve its expectations; it should exceed them. This is our opportunity to put a stake in the ground and say ‘there are barriers to rehab created by misjudgement, this is what is truly needed, and these are the opportunities that will make a real difference to people coming out of trauma and enabling them to continue with 365 days of rehab.