Oh so hopefully

For a great reason too - today is a special anniversary

Ten years ago today, at sometime around 3pm, I had an accident. A really, really bad one.

For my more constant readers, you’ll know in 2015, I released Glass Block. A month and a half after, ten years ago today, I bent over, I think, to take a bird off my cat on the main stairs in our house.
The next thing I know, my son and his girlfriend were home from school, David was running down the stairs and my neck was as far as I could feel.

I’ve landed on my neck before. When my daughter was a lot younger, in our house in Cheltenham, she was falling forwards, face first, so I pushed her back, overbalanced, grabbed the bannister and I fell… I was told that learning Judo and other stuff as a kid, and instinct must have taken over, because I came away with soft tissue damage. And a horrible kidney infection because straight after that incident was the summer of the horrible storms (06, Gloucestershire) when the water went off. That was three days after that fall.

This time was different. Several CTs, a zimmer frame, PT, and six days later, I got home. This time, they couldn’t tell me what the longer term damage was.
Ten years on, I know, of course, that hindsight is a wonderful thing. And in this case, I remember, maybe 11pm our time tonight, wondering whether I’d ever walk again. I was completely numb on my left side at that point. It didn’t look good.

What brought me hope back then was the idea that I could still read. One arm still worked at that point. As ever, I had my Kindle with me, I was showing off the people that I was working with and proud of.

I’ve been thinking, especially, about that hopeful feeling lately. When things are darkest, when everything is stacked against us, when it feels like we’re stuck. I remember how I felt, lying in that hospital bed, unable to feel anything on my left, and muted feelings on the right side, and absolute searing agony in my neck. I can’t remember what I was reading - I don’t know what I really did other than read and knit.

I’m also lucky. This bit of the story has a happy (ish) ending. It’s obvious when you see photos of what I do know that not only did I not end up paralysed, but externally at least, I look normal. But I wasn’t hopeful. I was stubborn.
The six days after the incident, I was discharged with a zimmer frame, which, as it’s the NHS, had a label saying it was leased to me for six months. I was flat out told that I wouldn’t be able to walk properly until at least Christmas, and that I needed to recover for a few months before I went to a PT.

My longer term readers will know that we spent that summer in London, on a three day break, after seeing my adopted sister (Katie-Anne, who we lost in 2018). By then, I was on a folding cane.

We did Disney the next year, and I only landed in a wheelchair the last day of the trip.

I sometimes wonder where the woman that outstubborned that zimmer frame went. It’s so much easier for me to be derailed, to give in, to stop doing things, because…well. Because.

And then, I remember that little spark. because it was. A teeny, tiny spark of ‘no, this isn’t going to be what stops me’. That hope in the sea of black hopelessness. And what it comes back to is I had access to my books.

My Substack would probably exist whether I wanted to only write for the rest of my life or not. And the truth is, I quite like running a server, I just don’t like being the person that has to spend my whole day on tech support. But, ten years on, I also have to acknowledge that life I wanted to build ‘just in case’ my life was…well…my life, didn’t happen.

I’m going back to that plan in the next couple of days. Updating it to match some of the stuff I’m doing now, but going back to the plan I made on that endless, pain-filled night where I went hunting for hope, found it and stubbornness, and got off that zimmer frame.

Yours, stunned,

Kai