Will Pike

Very few.

Very few people experience spinal injury and go home straight away to a suitable environment.

The flat that we were living in at the time was rented in a basement flat in Camden.

Completely inaccessible.

My job in a production company in a terraced house, two floors up in a sorry building, completely inaccessible.

I lost my job in a hospital bed.

We had to move while I'm in a hospital bed.

And when I say I lost my job, I lost it the best way possible.

These were open conversations about

supporting me in the best way but fundamentally i did i lost my job because it wasn't accessible we moved flat we were we were lucky my partner had enough um in the bank to be able to get a private rental that was manageable it wasn't perfect the bath wasn't accessible but we made it work and you know that first year was just oh good good to re-socialize good to get back with friends drinking playing video games chilling out

Did you ever feel like people were treating you differently?

Like, you know, did you come across people worrying about saying the wrong thing?

It's funny because at that point, like everyone's just, there was a lot of positive vibe.

And I realized I had a responsibility within all this to myself and

which was that in order to make this as easy as possible for me, I didn't want people pandering over me.

I didn't want worry.

I didn't want pity.

I didn't want overbearing attention.

The only way that wasn't going to happen was if I put on the type of brave face that I'm managing this, I'm coping.

But the only way to do that authentically was to actually cope and actually manage.