crip 4 life - faq
Im going to try explain all the shit i’ve been through since my accident, how my life’s change and what its like to live as a cripple kid*.
My accident - I don’t remember anything about my accident but heres what i’ve pieced together as to what I think happened.
I had just turned 21, i was up at thredbo ski village at the university winter games. It was the second day of a week long event of competition and parties. we had gone out that night to a social event at the local bar. sometime after 1am i left the bar in some state of inebriation (not sure exactly how drunk i was), i was trying to make my way from the bar back up through the village to my hotel. I had obviously gotten lost and couldn’t get a hold of anyone by phone to help direct me back. Its thought i heard people on the 3rd floor of a lodge and decided to see if they could help me, I then climbed up the outside of the building to reach there apartment. upon reaching the 3rd story balcony i somehow manage to slip backward off the balcony (it hasn’t been established how this happened exactly), I fell between 10-15ms to the ground landing on my head. because i was drunk my body was limp resulting in my neck bending and the full force of the fall being concentrated on my neck instead of my skull, if i had tensed the impact would of killed me. To add to how ‘lucky’ i was i managed to land on a small patch of damp grass, to one side of me was rocks, to the other a concrete drive way and just behind me a extremely step hill. The people in the apartment i was trying to reach heard me fall and rushed out to help me, bringing the lodge caretaker with them. being at the snow the caretaker knew not to move me because she anticipated that i had a spinal injury.
An ambulance was called and it was decided i would have to be transported by ambulance as the weather on the mountain meant a helicopter was to risky. i was driven 2hrs to coma hospital where i was initially assessed to have a suspected neck injury. I then got transferred to canberra hospital, where it was decided my injury was so serve that i needed urgent surgery to stabilise my spine. my first memory is being in canberra hospital refusing to let them call my parents until the doctors new the extent of my injury but i was eventually convinced to let them call mum and dad. I don’t remember anymore for about 3 days until waking in icu with my family around.
When i woke i was on heavy morphine, I ad completely shattered my c6 vertebrae in my neck and they had repaired it with bone from my hip fusing my c5, c6 and c7 vertebras with a number of screws. My left lung had also collapsed after my operations and my brother had noticed something was wrong so i was rushed to the ice again.
When i woke i had a neck brace, had several iv’s and needles in my arms, my hans were in splints, i had a feeding tube through my nose into my stomach and i had been intubated allowing a machine to breath for me. I was barley able to move, i could move my neck very slightly and could just lift my arms but the rest of my body was paralysed for the most part. when i opened my eyes my family explain what was going on but the morphine made it far to difficult to full understand. as i was unable to speak or write my parents held up a piece of board with the alphabet on it and asked “my how i felt?”, i managed to slowly type out “T-H-I-S S-U-C-K-S” and then passed out again. That may seem like something fairly obvious to say but for the doctors and the my family i think it was immensely comforting, to them it said ,despite my body being destroy, my head was still there and i was still Daniel.
Its kind of intense writing about this so im going to leave it there for now. I want to write out what i went through in the beginning to give people an understanding of where i’ve come from to be here now, its not all going to be so depressing and intense promise.
Also if i ever write a memoir i think im going to call it “this sucks”
*I wont go into a full explanation yet but the medical classification of my disability is ‘Incomplete C6 quadriplegic with brownsycade syndrome’
