Gran’s incredible trek
KAY HAS UNDERTAKEN AN ENORMOUS FEAT FOR THE LOVE OF HER SON AND OTHERS
She’s fought off wild dogs, suffered infections, battled extreme desert heat and icy cold snow, yet this formidable Aussie grandmother refused to give up her mission to walk across America.
Kay Ledson vowed to trek 4965km from California, all the way to Washington DC – winding her way through 16 cities – in order to raise awareness of spinal cord injury.
Her son Josh was paralysed from the neck down in a snowboarding accident in 2000. Doctors gave him a three per cent chance of recovery – if he lived. Refusing to accept it, Kay encouraged her athlete son to embark on a gruelling regimen of activity-based therapy.
Incredibly, after just five months, Josh took six steps out of the same hospital doors he was stretchered in through.
Since then, 68-year-old Melbournian Kay has spent $1.8m funding Josh’s recovery – paying for alternative therapies that have enabled Josh to ‘rebuild his neural pathways’ and ultimately walk, ride a motorbike, and even surf.
They now share Josh’s story in a bid to give others hope that it can be possible to regain function below the site of the injury. So what inspired Kay to do the walk now?
‘I was angry that in 18 years, nothing has really changed in the medical profession.
‘It’s called spinal cord injury, not spinal cord disability. But from the minute you are diagnosed with that injury, you are disabled in the eyes of the medical profession,’ Kay says. ‘I felt I needed to do something bold and brave to draw attention to these problems families face.’
Kay began her walk on September 22 and says the first 10 weeks were the hardest.
‘There were times I didn’t think I was going to make it,’ she tells New Idea. ‘I was very ill. There were times I wanted to give up, and then I remembered what Josh went through. It was like I had him walking with me a lot of the time, saying: “Come on, keep going.”’
Recalling her most terrifying experience, Kay described the moment she was hunted by two wild dogs on a reserve in Gallup, New Mexico.
In an incredible stroke of luck, just as the dogs were about to pounce, Kay’s foot nudged a glass bottle that was buried in the sand. Quick as a flash, she grabbed it and threw it in front of the dogs, just four metres away.
‘It landed in front of them and shattered, and the dogs ran off,’ she says.
Physically unharmed, the experience still shook Kay badly.
‘I wasn’t meant to die doing this walk. But then I had a flashback to when Josh was first injured. It was the day they were trying to get him to sit up for the first time since the accident. He kept passing out, so they kept saying: “We are going to stop.” But Josh said: “Keep going, I have to do this otherwise I won’t be able to sit up.” Josh inspired me. I wasn’t going to give up.’
And Josh couldn’t be prouder!
‘Mum is my hero,’ he says. ‘A lot of my recovery is down to her.’