The art of recovery

Henry Fraser was 17, and an academy player at Saracens rugby club, when a freak accident changed his life. On holiday in Portugal in 2009, he dived into the sea, hit his head and crushed his spinal cord. He spent six months in hospital and endured agonising operations, only to be told that he would never move his arms and legs again. But the moment his predicament really sank in, he told Donald Mcrae in The Guardian, was when he caught sight of his own reflection for the first time since the accident. “I didn’t recognise me at all. I had lost four stone. I was lost in this huge wheelchair. I couldn’t breathe for myself and my clothes were hanging off me. Time just stopped. I stared at myself and thought, ‘This is bad.’ I got back to my room and broke down.” Not for long, though. By 3am that same night, “everything cleared”, he says. “It was as if I’d felt everything I needed to feel. I couldn’t possibly feel any lower, so I thought: ‘I’ve got no one to blame. There’s no point being sad or angry, I might as well get on with it.’”

Since then, Fraser has gone back to school to finish his A levels, taken up “mouth art” (holding the pen or brush in his mouth), and had an exhibition of his paintings shown at a gallery in his native Hertfordshire. And now he has written a book, The Little Big Things, about the lessons he has learnt since the accident. The main one, he says, is to appreciate every happy moment while you can. “Once they’re taken away, you realise those moments are precious. Seeing sunlight again for the first time was huge. I was bang in the middle of the hospital with no natural daylight. So going out into the sunshine was brilliant. In the summer, I now sit out in the sun and make the most of it. When it’s gone I still think how I enjoyed it.”