The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
Two sides of the story
How a couple survived a devastating accident
When a cycling accident left banker Steven Dowd paralysed from the neck down, he contemplated taking his own life. Here, Steven, 41, and his wife Helen, 55, discuss his road to recovery, and how overcoming the struggles they faced brought them closer than ever. Photography by Ameena Rojee
Helen’s story
I was in bed when I received the news that my husband had been hospitalised. Steven had left for work at 6am, on the new racing bike he’d bought to train for a charity event. I wear earplugs because he snores terribly, and woke at 8am to a screenful of missed calls. I assumed it was a crisis at work – I was a youth worker for a local council – but there was a message from a woman I didn’t know: ‘Your husband has been involved in a serious accident.’
I tried to reach Steven’s colleague Dan, who he cycled in with. When Steven hadn’t turned up to their meeting spot, Dan had gone to find him. He said in a weird, flat voice that he’d found Steven with ‘his face bashed up’, having crashed into a barrier – he just didn’t see it – and that Steven had been taken to hospital. My first thought was, ‘His lovely face!’ but I reasoned that it couldn’t be that bad.
Only when the receptionist directed me to the resuscitation unit did I panic. When I saw Steven, with a weak smile and lifeless arms and legs, my heart froze. He’d dislocated his neck and crushed his spinal cord. A doctor took my hand and said, ‘I’m so sorry,’ and at that moment I hated her. I knew immediately he was paralysed and thought our marriage was over – I didn’t think either of us would cope with seeing our relationship change to that of a severely disabled spouse and carer.
In those first few days in intensive care, Steven went into this cheerful manager mode, leaving me to carry the anger. I looked at him, chatting breezily to the nurses, and didn’t recognise him: why was he not utterly devastated like me? But a week or so later I arrived to find him in tears. He’d been desperate for some water and the nurses couldn’t hear him. I think that was a wake-up call for both of us that my husband had gone from doing triathlons to being a limp body who couldn’t feed himself or go to the toilet without help. He couldn’t move anything below his neck. I could see it was unbearable. It broke my heart.
So one day, when Steven said he wanted to end his life at a euthanasia clinic abroad if his condition didn’t improve, I nodded in agreement, in tears. He’d been told he’d never walk again or regain feeling below his neck, and I knew I couldn’t stay with him if he was paralysed for life. It wasn’t that I hated the idea of caring for him. I couldn’t deal with the daily heartbreak of seeing this strong man I loved reduced to wearing nappies. It came down to a choice between both of us living with a severe disability and having some way out. Of course, the reality would have been heartbreaking.
Steven and I met when I was in my early 30s, a married mum of two. He was 19, working as a receptionist at his mum’s osteopathy practice in Essex. When I took my son in for treatment I thought, ‘Ooh, he’s a bit of all right,’ which sounds a bit pervy looking back. A year later, after my marriage broke down, I asked him out for a drink. It was meant to be a bit of fun but blossomed into something more.
Hard as those early weeks after the accident were, the plan to end Steven’s life gave us both, surprisingly, a sense of control. But then, three weeks after the accident, he was moved to St George’s Hospital, an hour from our home in Woolwich, and we were told about an experimental surgery that might allow him to regain some feeling in his body and limbs.
Our relationship was wobbly; our dynamic had shifted and we were on uncertain terrain. But I’ll never forget visiting him the day after the surgery, when he said he felt pins and needles in his fingers. I was overjoyed. I reached out to touch him, but he recoiled in pain.
Steven was moved to a rehabilitation centre. Slowly he regained control of his bladder and arms, and started to walk. I felt relieved – but things were still strained. Everyone was telling me how lucky I was that he had made this miracle recovery, and yet I felt numb. We’d always been tactile but now I was afraid to touch him in case I hurt him. Looking back, I can see that I’d had to shut down my love for Steven, and my feelings, to survive the trauma.
Six months after the crash, Steven came home. He still couldn’t walk without aids and he needed suppositories or a nurse to help him go to the loo, but his physical health came on in strides. One day, he told me he had set himself the task of walking well enough to carry the turkey to the table on Christmas Day. I felt proud of him, and also that this was very typically Steve: to go about life as if it was a series of personal challenges.
That summer we started couples therapy. Until we spoke to a counsellor, I’d been fixated on how much our life had changed, but from then we pledged to focus on the here and now.
I still wonder how we made it through. As much as I’ve hated him at times over the past four years, and blamed him for getting on the bike, I’ve never stopped loving him. Now, our marriage is stronger than ever. We’ve matured as a couple, and become more aware of the important things in life. And when Steven walked the turkey to the table that Christmas, my heart swelled with love and pride.
‘I knew immediately he was paralysed and thought our marriage was over’
Steven’s story
The accident happened in the blink of an eye: one minute I was cycling on the Thames-side path, the next I had flipped over a barrier I didn’t see and smashed into the concrete. I tried to shout for help, but I could only wheeze. Luckily two runners had heard my accident and raced back to help me.
As the ambulance sped towards A&E, I couldn’t move my arms or legs, and at the hospital scans confirmed my worst fears. The consultant told me I might never regain any sensations or movement from my neck down. Immediately I went into this weird dissociative mode. I noticed Helen coming and going to my bedside, looking scared, but didn’t face the reality of our situation.
Things started to dawn on me when I was thirsty one day a week or so into my stay in hospital and couldn’t get the nurses’ attention. I was in despair by the time Helen came. I was this 6ft 3in triathlete, the breadwinner, and here I was reduced to being a head on a pillow. It struck me that I was impotent: metaphorically and literally. I looked at Helen and wondered what would become of us.
One day I turned to her and said, ‘Helen, I don’t want this for you and you don’t want this for me either. If I don’t improve, we’ll just book a ticket to Switzerland and I’ll call it a day.’ Weirdly, that felt like the turning point. I didn’t want to move around in a power chair, driven by my mouth, for the rest of my days, and my lovely wife wouldn’t have to sacrifice her life to be my nurse. I was surprised by how readily she agreed and yet it brought us closer.
However, when I was offered an experimental surgical procedure, we jumped at the chance. The first thing I remember when I came round from the operation was this searing pain in my arms and seeing Helen looking on anxiously. When the consultant surgeon came into my room to tell me his tests showed that I’d walk again, Helen and I stared at each other in disbelief. ‘Oh, my God,’ we both mouthed. It was a joy to feel something in my arms and hands but it hurt emotionally that Helen couldn’t touch me; I’d developed nerve hypersensitivity and every human touch made my body jolt with pain.
We’d always been a touchy-feely couple. When we met, I was a university student and she was this brilliantly bold blonde. The age gap was often in my mind: I spent most of those early years trying to be a big man. There were ups and downs, and several splits, but once I graduated I moved in with her and her kids, aged four and nine. Things still weren’t always easy: I invested our savings in a dodgy property scheme that tanked in the financial crisis and then I developed a gambling habit, but she stuck by me and by the time of the accident, it was all behind us.
So when I was in recovery, I was determined for Helen not to have to do everything for me. I set myself challenges: pushing a blueberry around a table with my thumb, carrying the Christmas turkey to the table, getting back on my bike. Gradually, I started regaining feelings in different parts of my body. I still remember the first day I no longer needed help to go to the loo: that was a great day for both of us, as finally I felt some sort of independence, and that she no longer needed to be my carer. I’d given up on my banking career but wanted to prove to Helen that I could get back to some semblance of the man I was.
I’ve since learnt that it’s rare for couples to stay together after a trauma like this. Spinal injury isn’t something that just happens to the victim: it happens to everyone around them, especially their partner. In our case, I think it was worse for Helen, in a way, because I got loads of sympathy whereas she felt she had to squash her feelings and be the dutiful wife.
I still carry a lot of guilt around getting on my bike that day because I know Helen disapproved of me cycling on busy London roads. But the good thing about something as dramatic as this is that you don’t coast along as a couple afterwards. You have to actively make the decision to still be with each other every single day, and that’s something special. It’s been quite a journey, but I wouldn’t have made it without her. — As told to Sally Howard Steven Dowd is a keynote speaker on challenge, forced change and resilience (stevendowd.com)