Will Pike

And it's breaking me down again.

And your mind plays all these tricks on you and you're just coping, just coping.

And unfortunately for me, my rehab has massively slowed down because the arm injuries, I couldn't do weight bearing.

So I was in hospital for an exceptionally long amount of time.

I was in the spinal unit for another six months.

And that's crazy again, because I'd never spent a night in a hospital.

I'd think of my wrist once as a teenager.

Never really done anything like this.

And you do become institutionalized in the sense that the hospital is a safety net.

When you're coming to terms with spinal injury and being in a wheelchair for the first time and catheterizing and managing your bowels and using a shower chair and transfers and all this stuff, it's in the context of an environment designed to support you.

Yeah, there's always someone there to help you if you need it.

Nurses, HCAs, all these people.

There becomes a point where you're like, I've got to get out of here.

I need to get back to life.

And eventually they deemed my rehab as a point where I could go home.

The next lesson Will would learn is just how hard it is for people with spinal injuries returning into society after hospital.

into a world that really is just not equipped or prepared for those now facing big enough challenges as it is.

And on top of that, what once were things that never had to be considered become massive obstacles for day-to-day life.

Then you start encountering a whole new world of issues because there's a huge bottleneck with spinal injury discharge, which is where do people go?

How many homes are actually accessible?