”I went to bed and woke up paralysed”
When Olivia Langley, 27, from Newark, experienced back pain in the middle of the night, she had no idea she might never walk again
What do you think?” my boyfriend Tom Wharmby, 26, asked as the estate agent led us through the house. “It’s perfect,” I smiled.
Tom and I had been together for two years and had decided it was time to start looking for our first home, a place to call our own.
And now we’d found it.
Between finally getting on the property ladder, working as a bookkeeper for a local business and preparing to take my exams to become an accountant, life looked exciting.
Things with Tom were great and when I wasn’t working, I was your typical 20-something – hitting the gym five times a week and seeing my pals. So when the offer we’d put in on the house was accepted, I was all smiles. But after I went to bed on 21 August, everything changed.
“Argh,” I winced as I woke in the early hours, a sharp pain in my back.
“Are you OK?” mumbled Tom next to me. “I think it’s a muscle spasm,” I reassured him, remembering I’d had them as a teen.
I took some ibuprofen and Tom held some frozen peas against my back to help ease the pain. But before long, a strange pins and needles sensation spread down both legs.
And then they went completely numb. I couldn’t feel a thing.
“This isn’t right – I need an ambulance,” I told Tom, starting to panic. Punching 999 into my phone, I told the operator that I needed help – and fast.
Paramedics soon arrived and whisked me to King’s Mill Hospital in Sutton-in-ashfield, where I had an MRI scan.
“We can see a mass on your spine that’s restricting the blood flow, but we don’t know what it is yet,” doctors told me.
From there, I was taken to Queen’s Medical Centre, a more specialist hospital in Nottingham, for emergency surgery.
BLOOD CLOT
In theatre, they drilled into my spine to remove the mass, which they confirmed was a haematoma – a type of blood clot. Waking up groggily in the recovery room, my heart sank as I realised I still couldn’t feel my legs.
“I thought the feeling would come back after surgery,” I told the doctor.
“I’m so sorry, but you’ve sustained a serious spinal cord injury,” he replied gently. “You’re paralysed from the waist down.”
He carried on talking, explaining treatments and what happens next, but I couldn’t hear him. That word – paralysed – played again and again in my mind, on a loop.
I didn’t understand. Just a few hours ago I was absolutely fine, but now I was being told I may never walk again. It made no sense.
For the next six weeks, I stayed at Queen’s Medical Centre, building up my strength through physiotherapy. The form of paralysis I have is called paraplegia and means I can’t feel anything from the belly button down.
Of course, being suddenly unable to walk was a big adjustment. Because all sensation in my stomach muscles had gone, I couldn’t even hold myself up without leaning on someone. Still, I was determined to regain my independence so I kept pushing.
While in hospital, I turned 27 and found out Tom and I had finally completed on our new home. That was especially difficult.
When we’d first started house-hunting,
I’d imagined that moment to be huge, with a big celebration as we toasted our future with a glass of fizz. But instead,
I was on a hospital ward, with my future suddenly uncertain.
In time, I was transferred once again, this time to Sheffield’s Northern General Hospital for rehabilitation. There, my day was made up of a timetable of different therapies, as well as optional extras such
‘My heart sank – I couldn’t feel my legs’
as wheelchair sports and educational talks.
As soon as I was able, I went along to a wheelchair sports session.
“I’ll do anything I can to get strong again,” I told the nurses.
The way I see it, you get out what you put in, so having goals – however small they may have seemed – got me through. That, and the support of Tom and my family.
DARK TIMES
My paralysis has turned all of our lives upside-down, not just mine. In my darker moments, I feel like I’ve ruined Tom’s life. Who, at 26, expects their girlfriend to become paralysed overnight? How do you cope with that? He’s been a rock, though.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he promised me firmly. His support is more than I could ever have asked for. He’s a constant in my life when everything else is uncertain.
Doctors still aren’t able to say if I’ll ever walk again. Spinal cord injuries are so complex that it’s simply impossible to predict. I’ve been given only a one to two per cent chance at the moment and while that was hard to hear,
I’m determined to do everything I can to make it happen.
Another uncertainty I’ve had to contend with is having children. I always dreamed I’d be a mum, but now I know that’s a long way in the future. I have to get back to where I want to be before I can look after a child.
I was discharged from hospital on 7 December and live with my parents while the house I bought with Tom, which he’s already living in, gets adapted for my needs.
My amazing best friend Rosie Bown set up a Gofundme page to help with the cost of the alterations, plus things like a lightweight wheelchair and standing frame and the cost of ongoing physiotherapy. The generosity so far has been overwhelming. “Look, Liv – another donation,” Rosie grinned as she showed me the page total climbing up to £6,000.
“I can’t believe it,” I said, amazed. Every penny, every message of support and encouragement
– they’ve meant the world to me. By sharing my story, I want to say thank you.
I also hope what I’ve been through raises awareness of spinal cord injuries and the fact that they can happen to anybody at any time.
When people see me in my wheelchair, they assume it’s the result of an accident or some trauma. In reality, I was just a normal young woman, living my life like everybody else, when things changed in the blink of an eye.
Doctors still don’t know what caused my blood clot. All they can tell me is that it must have formed very quickly, given how rapidly I fell ill.
I go over and over the days leading up to that August night in my mind, wondering if there were any signs, any symptoms I could have missed. But there’s nothing. I was perfectly healthy one moment and paralysed the next. That’s something I’m going to have to learn to come to terms with.
Life may have changed hugely for me over these past few months, but one thing
I refuse to lose is my independence. After all, I’m still me. I’m determined to get my old life back, even if I do have to learn to do things differently along the way. And with my family and
Tom by my side, I can do anything.