Will Pike

But I don't know why.

I know I'm in a lot of pain I know I can't move stuff I have a little bit of movement in my right leg which is sort of I think giving me hope that this will be something that I'll move on from but I just didn't know and it was only when I got to the spinal unit after my arms had been stabilised and the operations had been good enough to get those repairs underway that they transferred me and

And I eventually have a consultation with the spinal consultant there with my partner and my dad.

And we're in a room and they've got the x-rays out.

We're looking at the spinal cord.

She's showing me how it's compressed.

It's not severed, it's compressed.

And at that point, I'm still kind of quite upbeat.

I'm like, okay, right.

So information's getting through there and I've got a bit of movement here.

And so, okay.

She's like, there are two ways of classifying spinal injury.

You've got incomplete and

where over time urological and motor function can return and you've got complete where essentially it's a closed circuit and that's it there's going to be no healing essentially no recovery and your injury is complete and it it was like my world collapsed it was just like optimism just drained from my body

it was like hope just evaporating like because up until that point i'd allowed myself to not really fully engage with it like i'm just gonna kind of keep it here i'm gonna you know this will be fine and then to be told that actually yeah you're not you're not gonna make a recovery from this

And it was emotional ground zero.

It was two months from point of injury, but it was ground zero in terms of my emotional journey.

And I kind of cut the consultation short and I just went outside and I just started crying.

And I kind of measured my progress

in kind of how often I've wept.