On a fine sunny afternoon that turned into several beers and shots with friends in the summer weather, I received a phone call from a dear friend Katie Hayes from days of old. I sat there in my wheelchair, absolutely hammered, a best friend over from Hong Kong with my best friends here, trying to process what a hysterical best friend of years gone by, Katie, was trying to tell me on the phone.

The next days were processing this news, putting myself back 26 years to breaking my neck and laying on the beach, how the hell could this happen to someone I know? I dated KJ for a few weeks when i left school, she was a couple years older and her brother David a couple years younger than I… I’ll never forget Katie’s mum Paula steaming into the fish restaurant where we both worked, me stood in the back ground eating some chips, Paula shouting at the lad behind the counter “who’s this James Price, where is he”. She was trying to track me down because I’d brought KJ home late one night, despite her being 18 and me 16 😂. I literally ducked behind some customers, legged it out the shop throwing chips in the air down the road to escape being chastised! Amazing memories. KJ and I became very best friends living and working in the Imperial Hotel Torquay, and in houses and flats afterwards, raving in our free time as the 90s craziness absorbed us.

How can someone who has known and of course have loved two people in her life,  to sustain such deviating injuries.

David at some points felt like a little bro to me, years later he lived in my flat, after I broke my neck and went to university a couple years later, he would stay there to look after it for me and it gave him a home. If anyone understood the gravity and reality of what happened to me, really it was David, by living in a flat that was adapted for someone freshly injured in a wheelchair.

“David, I thought there was an unwritten rule back then that I did all the stupid shit so you guys didn’t have to”!!

The last time I saw David properly was at his sisters 30th birthday rave in Bournemouth I think, many moons before. I drove down from Nottingham where I was living then, and then caught them up in a mini bus half way! We are talking 15 plus years and bar the odd bump into when driving past, I had not seen him or met his wife or kids, life just passes us by. With lads, it doesn’t mean the brotherly love ever fades, we just bury them as chapters in our lives so to hear the news when I did, still cut. Instantly, I could put myself behind his eyes laying on a beach on a Spanish Island, completely paralysed, floppy, in pain, but totally aware. “I think I’ve done a Pricey” he whispered to his wife next to him, just like my ex fiancé lay next to me as I told her I couldn’t move a damn thing in my body. Then my emotions spun round to Elly feeling what my ex went through in those first moments, the pain, the loneliness, the tears, the fear, the shock. the gravity of what might actually be happening – my heart was just breaking for them both.

Spinal injury to the degree of life changing paralysis is horrific, to have complete normality and be non disabled all your life to suddenly having everything ripped away from you physically, is unbelievably crushing, and why I would never wish it on an enemy let alone a friend. One becomes a baby again, have to learn everything all over again, become someone completely new just to survive. What matters the most is the character we have inside us, that will never change, but it absolutely influences how people  handle such trauma and come out the other side. David had a major zest for life, and that is how I have been described many times, so I know he has the tools in the locker to keep positive and stay strong in the mind, now the body is unable. To not be born with disability, impairment or any form of ill health then to suddenly find oneself thrown into this world is arguably the hardest thing mentally a person can ever go through, especially when it rips a person from being the independent provider to the dependent.

David is at the beginning of a journey that I have been on 26 years, I know everything that he is going through and will go through emotionally, but sadly, he had to one up me, take it to another level, and is completely paralysed below the neck.

Speaking to his wife Ellie on the phone in the days after the accident, hearing her tears and desperation, I guess horrifically, allowed me to experience what my ex Mrs and family went through in those first moments. “Is it really that bad, will he recover, is there any hope, what are we going to do, how do we cope if it’s the worst?” etc etc.

I was 21 and set on marriage and settling down, dreaming of becoming a firefighter but really, no responsibilities other than working. David has a family, a successful business he built from scratch, children he actively participated with, that’s where I can only imagine mentally what he is going through. I have a degree of understanding, when my daughter now has to hear me say no because I cannot go on a ride with her, or do something with her, that she really wants to do but is inaccessible or I’m physically incapable, absolutely kills me. Seeing her face drop, there’s no pain like it, and for that…

I am sorry David, there is no help for that, just your resilience and strength and understanding you may feel those emotions, but your kids still see you for you, their loving amazing daddy.

Every part of you and your families pain David, I feel it, like a fresh wound, and I am so sorry for this happening to a little brother, I really am.

It gave me me some comfort that I was able to explain to Ellie over the phone while she was in Ibiza what would be happening to David day by day, both physically and emotionally. Making sure they got the tracheotomy in as soon as possible so he did not have the complications I did over there, making sure he did not get sores like I did, being able to relate to her when David had collapsed lungs and chest drains the same as me that it was normal and the infections would clear eventually. To telling her to prepare David for having ‘suction’ from his lungs to clear the gunk with a tube, that for 10 seconds feels like the very soul is being sucked out of you as they take all the air from from your lungs, too! Even being able to say to her, he is still David, don’t talk to him differently, or like he’s disabled, or like he has a mental impairment, he just cant move, talk to him normally.

I say that to anyone reading this that knows David – he is still the same man, his body just doesn’t respond anymore – do not molly coddle him, patronise him, or talk down or over him. There is nothing more disrespectful and infuriating.

I am pleased to say that David is on his journey now and in Salisbury spinal unit, again, an uncanny thing to be there myself for an M’O’T just a few weeks before him and telling them about David and to get him in there asap.

David is siting up in a wheelchair, seeing his family, and of course,  still smiling.

This world can be so beautiful, but so damn cruel.

If you can, please follow David’s journey through rehabilitation, support where you can, and send all the positive vibes you can to him and his family on this difficult journey ahead 🙏.

Written with sadness and love xxx

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