PARALYMPIAN: PARALYSIS IF
A Gold-medal winning Paralympian is seeking legal action against the NHS, claiming it failed to offer radiotherapy treatment before performing surgery to a spinal tumour that left him paralysed.
Champion rower David Smith has a rare genetic condition, a hemangiopericytoma, which means his spinal tumour regenerates.
He has undergone six operations to cut out the cancer from his neck since it was diagnosed in 2010. The fourth, in March 2016, left him paralysed down one side.
David, 41, an MBE who has represented Great Britain in skiing, athletics, cycling, bobsleigh and karate, and who won a gold medal at the London 2012 Paralympics, claims he should have been offered radiotherapy instead of undergoing risky surgery.
The 6ft 4in British champion says he is taking legal action against the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which carried out the repeated surgery, to highlight the unmet need for radiotherapy among cancer patients in the UK.
The technique uses radiation to kill cancer cells.
He says he also wants to make sure that “future mistakes” don’t happen.
“You rely on doctors to make the best decisions for you. If I had been successfully treated with radiotherapy in 2014 – known then to increase survival rates for patients with my form of tumour – I wouldn’t have needed the surgery in 2016 which paralysed me.
“Someone needs to be made accountable. There are many other people who are not given appropriate radiotherapy in this country and this needs to be addressed.”
He said he suffers daily despite his apparent strength and resilience. “It breaks my heart. I am still competing at an international level and people think I’m superhuman to do these things in sport.
“I can swim an Iron Man distance and ride 1,000 miles. But getting ready to swim is harder than the swim itself. I do sport because I have nothing else.”
He confesses: “Having the spinal cord injury is worse than having the tumour. I would be happy to lose everything and wake up on the streets if I could have my limbs back. There are days when I lie in bed and just don’t function. I cry myself to sleep.
“I can no longer do what most people take for granted – such as have sex with a partner, despite feeling desire – and just about everything in a day from brushing my teeth to getting a night’s sleep. I am a prisoner in my own body which is also in pain all the time as I cannot move properly.”
Despite this, David, from Aviemore, Scotland, who began his sports career as a teenager, has continually astounded doctors, his fans and the sports world by competing at an international level following all his six surgeries.
Although he developed symptoms of the tumour aged 18, and repeatedly visited his GP complaining of severe pain throughout his body, fatigue, numbness and loss of bladder function, the cancer was misdiagnosed as chronic fatigue syndrome.
Despite a club foot David was a talented amateur competing in athletics and karate as a teenager and young adult. In 2008 he learnt his foot made him eligible for the Paralympic team.
However, two years later, in April 2010, his tumour was detected.
It had seemed unlikely David would compete again after each of his operations – especially after the first, in May 2010, which left him temporarily paralysed due to a blood clot in his neck.
The clot was removed and he gradually learnt to row again.
“At first I couldn’t even walk, but I set my goal to row at the highest level again.at 7am I would get up, shut my eyes and visualise getting back in the boat. I would see the water, hear the sound of the boat as it entered.
“I had every hour planned – doing the basics – walking or catching a ball. Within three months I was in a rowing machine, still numb from the neck down. It felt like being covered in bubble wrap.
“It was dreadfully slow at first. After six months, in November 2010, I got back on the water in time to train for the Paralympics.”
After winning the London Paralympics in August 2012 David took up a place on the British
‘I’m a prisoner in my own body’