Waikato Times

How a horror accident

Paralympia­n #156 Jai Waite represente­d New Zealand at two consecutiv­e Paralympic Games in wheelchair rugby. He tells of the impact Para sport had on him.

- Lonely Planet

Iwas 24 years old when my old life ended, and my new life began. I was on the other side of the world when I broke my neck and became paralysed from the neck down.

It was September 2, 2000. I was three months into my OE. A Taranaki lad roaming Europe with three of his mates from Waikato University. We were on a Greek island called Ios – the

had it listed as ‘‘party island for the under 30s’’ – a 10-hour ferry ride from Athens. The day of my accident was the last night of seven on the island. We were down on the beach and I had just won two dozen beer in a horizontal bungie competitio­n. I called to my mates that I was just going down to the sea to wash the sand off my body. I walked in waist deep into the ocean and went to duck dive through the half-metre swell that was gently lapping in. Almost as instantly as my head pierced the water I was struck in the face with a huge smack – it was a sandbar. I was knocked out instantly. As I came around, I found myself floating on top of the sea staring down at the bottom of the ocean.

I tried to rouse myself up on to my feet to stand – there was no movement. I began to panic as I started to breath in water – one more mouthful, one more mouthful. One of my mates who had been watching me enter the water sensed something was wrong and came down and turned me over.

He asked, ‘‘What are you doing?’’, puzzled at why I was just floating about. I coughed out ‘‘I can’t move!’’. He called to people on the beach and luckily there were a couple of Swedes who had worked in a spinal unit. I was moved to the sand on a surfboard and the realisatio­n of what had just occurred started to sink in. Panic and fear overwhelme­d me.

I then had a five-hour trip from Ios to Athens via boat and plane. The next three days were spent transferri­ng between hospitals until my medical insurers found a way out of the Greek medical system and to a hospital in Austria to perform the surgery to repair my broken vertebrae.

After a month in hospital in Vienna, I returned home to the Auckland Spinal Unit where I had to learn how to live in this broken body. Initially I had the belief that I would recover – I still had full feeling – and I hadn’t really tried to think of a life in a chair as my outcome.

As the months past and movement wasn’t returning, the sadness set in. The hardest time was those early months. My level of disability (C5/6 tetraplegi­c ASIA type C – a fancy title for impaired upper limb movement, weak to no triceps, no hand function, no movement from the chest down) left me dependent early on. I couldn’t dress myself, feed myself, brush my teeth. I even needed help to go the toilet.

What was worse was I had always enjoyed sport; rugby, cricket, volleyball, golf, football, squash – I loved it all. What was there for me now when I couldn’t move 90 per cent of my body?

I was about five months into my rehab at Auckland Spinal Unit when TASC (Spinal Support NZ these days) sent someone to meet me who was of a similar disability. A bloke called Grant Sharman turned up. He had just retired from the Wheel Blacks off the back of a bronze medal at the Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games. He said, ‘‘you’d be perfect for wheelchair rugby’’. At that stage it was taking me 40 seconds to push a wheelchair from one side of the gym to the other.

I didn’t go along to Auckland Wheelchair Rugby straight away. I left the spinal unit and spent time trying to negotiate the outside world. The first year out I was trying to fit into my old life but in a wheelchair. I would go out, but my confidence was low. I was still mourning the life I had lost – I put on a brave face and carried on. I made small progressio­ns in my independen­ce but nothing major. I still needed fulltime carer support. Soon all my mates were departing for their own OEs. I could feel the sadness start to slide back in and then I remembered Grant suggesting wheelchair rugby.

Icontacted Parafed Auckland and found out the practice days. I was nervous turning up on the first day but I need not have been. All the guys were awesome. Straight away they had a chair set up. I was lifted in, strapped in and let loose. The first hit rattled through my body. It felt great. I had played rugby since I was 5, and now I found it again.

The next 12 months I played every training session (Thursdays and Saturdays). I had a classifier come and look at my muscle function. I was given a classifica­tion of 1.0, which is the lower end of function for rugby, so my core roll was blocking and screening for the higher point players on the team.

I practised my ball skills daily, passing, bouncing. I took my chair home and started pushing at the botanical gardens to get fitter. By now I could push a chair from end to end of the basketball court in 25 seconds.

Rugby was helping my body grow stronger, and emotionall­y I felt prouder. As a sport

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 ??  ?? Jai Waite trains for the world championsh­ips in 2010.
Jai Waite trains for the world championsh­ips in 2010.

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