So it was great to be home, away from the hospital, but there was an obvious complication. I couldn’t walk, and I had converted our loft to be our bedroom. There was no way I could get up two flights of stairs and so…..
Not ideal, but at least I had a bed, my wife was on the sofa.
It was definitely not a situation that could continue indefinitely, but for now, I could wake up and see my wife and kids, whilst I couldn’t actually go anywhere (which the kids realised very quickly!), it was just good to be around them. It would take approximately five minutes for me to negotiate the reverse and forward motion to get round the corner from the living room through the front door on to a platform that my brother had made and away. It wasn’t easy, but we managed. Then it was Christmas, and had it not been for the Ilminster under 11`s football team deciding to do a sponsored walk, for my kids, they would not have had one. The football team, (who my eldest daughter was playing for before my accident), sprung the cash raised on us when we took my daughter to the training session, she had not been able to take part much, but turned up when she could. We can not thank them enough for what they did, or the people who sponsored them.
Luckily for us, a charity called Haig Homes Trust purchased a bungalow around five miles form our house and so we moved out of our home of fifteen years, sold up and relocated to the bungalow. www.haighousingtrust.org.uk
The whole inside was decorated inside 24 hours with family travelling down from as far as London to get it done. It was like DIY SOS! We put the pathways out the front so I can get out to the road in my manual chair. We’ve also put a new bathroom in with a wellness system to relax the muscles in my legs which suffer from spasms.
Helps my legs, and then wifey gets to relax after caring for me.
We have had to spend quite a lot on various things which we wouldn’t have had to have done if we didn’t have to move, mainly because we had done it all already, we were just very fortunate that firstly, we had the house to sell, and that we had family and friends which have done the majority of the work for us. Two guys from Bournemouth, which is an hour and a half from us, came down and did the above ground block work on our pond for us, for a sausage sandwich lunch, and we had never met them before. That was just amazing! The pond needed to be done, the koi were in a very temporary home, and the help kept coming from friends and family.
We supplied the materials and others supplied the labour. Amazing.
We have both been deeply moved by the amount of help we have received from friends and family and it has been proven that it is only when you truly are in need that you find out who your friends are.
