When Life Doesn't Go to Plan: Finding a way forward

After the accident, I didn't know whether I would ever walk again.

For four and a half months, I couldn't even sit upright in a wheelchair. My world became much smaller, and the things I had once done without thinking suddenly seemed a very long way away.

It would be another four months or so before I could begin getting around the kitchen.

Strangely, I had already adapted the kitchen before my worst fall. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I had wondered whether there might come a time when I would need to use a wheelchair, so I had made changes just in case.

At the time, it was preparation for something I hoped would never happen.

Then it happened.

The kitchen I had adapted as a precaution became part of helping me regain a little independence.

Looking back, I think that period taught me something I wouldn't fully understand until much later. When life doesn't go to plan, sometimes the answer isn't to keep trying to get back to exactly where you were before.

Sometimes you have to start from where you are and find a different way forward.

Learning to Walk Tall

Those first few days were incredibly hard.

I was in France, staying at a friend's house, and he had to go to work. A hospital bed had been brought into the house for me and positioned as close as possible to the downstairs toilet.

One way or another, I had to find a way of getting those few feet on my own.

I was using a Zimmer frame, and even that short journey felt enormous. A physiotherapist visited me every day, but he didn't want me becoming too dependent on the frame. He explained that leaning forward could put unnecessary pressure on the front of my spine and that he didn't want me developing a poor walking pattern.

His instruction was simple: walk tall.

If I couldn't manage very far, then I was to do less. The distance wasn't what mattered. Whatever I could manage, I was to try to do it standing as tall as I safely could.

Those first days were harrowing for other reasons too.

At night, sleep was difficult. The fall kept returning in recurring nightmares and I would relive it again and again. Proper sleep seemed almost impossible. Instead, I would doze for short periods during the day.

There are only so many films and television programmes you can watch when you're lying in a bed day after day. Eventually, I began running out of things to occupy my mind.

So I found something else.

I started learning.

Flags, countries, cities, capitals, anything I could explore while lying down. My body couldn't go very far, but there was nothing stopping my mind from travelling.

The hospital bed helped too. I could adjust its position myself, which gave me control over at least one small part of my day.

None of these things changed what had happened to me. They didn't suddenly make me able to walk or take away the fear.

But they gave me something I badly needed at the time: small pieces of independence.

Looking back now, I realise that changing direction didn't begin with some enormous decision about my future.

It began with a few feet to the bathroom.

It began with learning a flag.

And, quite literally, it began with learning to walk tall.

Seeing Myself Differently

During those months, I often thought about my grandma.

She had been run over by a drunk driver and was left partially paraplegic. Yet she wouldn't use a wheelchair. Not for love nor money would she be seen in one.

I remembered that while I was lying there looking at my own wheelchair and wishing desperately that I could simply sit in it.

By Christmas, I finally could.

Getting home had been a very difficult journey, but my children seemed to understand that I needed more than simply being back inside my own four walls. They took me to a local garden centre to see the Christmas decorations and displays.

I think they knew I needed to get out of the house.

I knew it too. After so many months of being confined by what my body could and couldn't do, getting out into the world again mattered to my mental wellbeing.

As I made my way around the garden centre, propelling myself in the wheelchair, I caught sight of my reflection in a large display mirror.

I stopped.

For the first time, I really saw myself in that chair.

Something shifted.

The wheelchair had been something I had longed to be able to use. It had represented progress. Sitting in it had once seemed almost impossibly far away.

Now, looking at my reflection, I suddenly disliked what I saw.

It wasn't because there was anything wrong with using a wheelchair. That chair had given me something incredibly important: mobility when my body couldn't provide it for me.

But in that moment, I knew I didn't want it to become the limit of what I tried to achieve.

A small spark appeared.

I wanted to fight for whatever independence my body might still allow me to regain.

There was another thing I had begun to notice whenever I went anywhere in the chair.

“Excuse me.”

I seemed to say it constantly.

Excuse me while I tried to get through. Excuse me while I manoeuvred around something. Excuse me while I needed someone to make a little more room.

Two words I had barely thought about before suddenly seemed to follow me everywhere.

The wheelchair had given me some of my freedom back, but it also made me acutely aware of how easily the world can become more difficult to navigate when you're sitting rather than standing.

That reflection in the garden centre mirror didn't make me get out of the chair.

But I think it was the moment something inside me decided that, if there was a way to eventually leave it behind, I was going to try to find it.

The Next Step

Christmas came and went, and I thought long and hard about what came next.

Quite literally, I needed to think about my next step.

I knew that if I wanted to regain more independence, I was going to need to push myself further. My feet worked properly. My arms worked properly. I was a driver, and I began wondering whether I might be able to drive again.

Fortunately, my vehicle was a van. The driving position was upright, and everything I needed was within easy reach. There would be no stretching across for controls.

But first, I had to be able to get to it.

My children had been brilliant. They would have done anything for me, and I knew that. But they all had jobs and lives of their own, and I found it increasingly difficult to keep asking them for help.

More than that, I didn't want to become reliant on them.

I began to feel that, for me, part of making progress meant trying to do as much as I safely could for myself.

So I practised.

Every day, I walked to the kitchen. I used the furniture for balance and kept trying to let go.

At first, they were tiny steps.

Let go.

Balance.

A few steps.

Hold on again.

Then try once more.

Day after day, I pushed myself a little further.

January brought a milestone.

I could walk to my van.

I lived alone, so there was nobody standing beside me that day to help me get into it. I picked up the keys, made my way outside and opened the door.

Fortunately, the van had side steps, which helped me climb in.

And then I just sat there.

The effort and pain it had taken simply to get myself into that seat consumed me for a few minutes.

Then I turned the key.

The engine roared into life.

I felt a buzz go through me.

I'd got this far.

I fastened my seat belt and braced myself. I wanted, desperately, to feel some freedom from those same four walls I had been looking at for months.

I turned up the music.

I put the windows down.

And then I released the handbrake and rolled off my driveway.

I can still remember the feeling of the air coming through those windows. The familiar smells of my village. The countryside around my home passing by again instead of existing somewhere beyond the walls of my house.

I wasn't going anywhere particularly important.

I was simply driving down the road.

But to me, it felt enormous.

For the first time in nearly half a year, I felt real freedom.

That journey wasn't about how far I drove.

It was about discovering how far I had already come.

Seeing What Had Always Been There

I knew my life was never going to be what it had been before.

But perhaps for the first time, I was beginning to see things differently.

As I drove through my village, I noticed things I must have passed hundreds of times without really seeing them. I noticed the cows standing in the fields. I listened to the birds. I looked properly at the countryside around the place I called home.

And I noticed the smells.

That surprised me.

They were familiar smells I had probably never consciously acknowledged before, but with the windows down and the air coming into the van, I recognised them immediately.

It smelled like home.

It smelled like my village.

Even when I was back inside the house, I seemed to notice more. I remember hearing a bird calling from the chimney. In my mind I could picture him sitting proudly on the chapeau, chest puffed out, calling for a mate and doing his very best to look attractive to her.

These were tiny things, but perhaps I noticed them because I had spent so long unable to go anywhere.

My children weren't quite as impressed by my newfound independence as I was.

I kept getting told off for not letting them help me.

“Someone should have gone with you.”

And, of course, they were right to worry. They loved me and wanted to protect me. Their support throughout those months had been incredible.

But there was something I was beginning to understand about myself.

This was my road.

My life.

And I had to find my own way through what had happened to me.

That didn't mean refusing help when I needed it. It meant discovering what I was capable of doing for myself.

My goals were tiny. To somebody else, some of them might hardly have looked like goals at all.

Walk a few more steps.

Let go of the furniture.

Reach the van.

Get into the driver's seat.

Drive down the road.

But those small achievements felt enormous to me.

Each one gave me something the last one hadn't.

Confidence.

Determination.

A reason to try for the next one.

I couldn't change what had happened, and I couldn't simply return to the life I'd had before.

What I could do was keep moving towards whatever life might come next.

One tiny goal at a time.

A Different Direction

Looking back, I think I spent a long time believing that progress meant getting back to the person I had been before the accident.

Eventually, I understood that wasn't going to happen.

My life had changed.

Accepting that didn't mean I had given up. In many ways, it was the opposite. Once I stopped measuring everything against the life I'd had before, I could begin to see what was still possible.

I learned to set small goals. Some took days, others took months. There were setbacks, frustrations and times when my determination probably worried my children more than I realised.

But every small achievement gave me something to build on.

I still live differently now. There are things I have to think about that once wouldn't have crossed my mind, and things I approach with far more care.

But perhaps I notice more too.

I notice the countryside.

I notice the birds.

I notice the air coming through an open window and the familiar smell of home.

Life didn't go to plan.

I couldn't change that.

What I could change was the direction I took from there.

And sometimes, I've learned, a different direction can take you somewhere you never expected to find.