A spinal cord injury survivor of the neck, a former wheelchair rugby player, coach, wheelchair athletics athlete, event fundraiser for charities, dog lover, current Parasurfer and most importantly: a Father.

James is the youngest of 3 (plus one half brother) was born at Basildon Hospital in 1978 and lived in Billericay Essex until the age of 12 when his late Father, Anthony Kirtland Price, retired and moved the family to Brixham, Devon. James attended Brixham Community college from 1990 to 1994, where he then worked at summer jobs in the local fish restaurant, pub / restaurant in Newton Abbott before his first full time apprenticeship as a trainee chef at the Churston Court Hotel. James worked in several jobs over the next years in Torbay as a chef, also a spell in retail for 18 months before returning to cooking and trying to get in to the fire service.

In 1999 while working as a second chef James broke his neck while on holiday with his fiancé at the time, shattering his c6 vertebrae rendering him two thirds paralysed and lost the ability to feel pain or temperature below the chest. Due to infection from sea water James also sustained collapsed lungs and pneumonia and required ventilation to breathe for him, his neck was fixed via a hip bone graph and metal plate in his neck before being flown back to Torbay Hospital, in the UK. James sustained a further complication in his neck requiring a tracheotomy that collapsed his throat and prolonged rehabilitation while James fought to overcome relentless infections in his chest. James had one to one intensive care for 3 months while his lungs gradually started to breathe for themselves again, before attending rehabilitation at Stoke Mandeville Spinal Unit, rehabilitation was again hindered due to the hospital bug MRSA and the need to keep the tracheotomy and several further laser surgeries on James’s throat to create a new partial airway. In August 2000 James left the spinal unit as a permanent wheelchair user unable to stand or walk, into a local special needs residential care home while awaiting further throat surgery, James moved into his own accommodation independently in September 2000 before returning to stoke Mandeville as an impatient for further throat surgery and rehabilitation for for three months.

Over the course of the past 25 years since the initial neck break, James has had countless surgeries on his throat to enable an airway, although partial, he lived without a tracheotomy or stent in the airway, with a 50% reduction in breathing capacity until 2013, when new surgery techniques removed 3cm of James problem area in the throat. James has also had 2 surgeries on his eyes cutting them open to adjust the muscles and 2 further shoulder surgeries! He knows his way round a hospital!

Spinal injury did not stop James and his zest for life pre-injury became just as palpable post injury, after a couple of ‘dark years’, as James puts it.

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