Leon sustained his spinal cord injury in a snowboarding boarding accident. With a young family, both Leon and his wife had to adapt to their new family dynamic."I sustained my injury whilst living in America. Jessica, our youngest, was only four years old and doesn’t remember much before the accident. Lauren, our eldest, was out snowboarding with me when the accident happened.  She was only six at the time but was the one that alerted people that I’d fallen and wasn’t getting up.

"When I was injured we’d been living in America for about five years. As you can imagine, we had to pay for absolutely everything. We had health insurance, but that doesn’t cut it when the surgery alone was $140,000. It’s traumatic because you’re struggling with your new body and you’ve got this financial struggle as well. "We’d spent around eight years living in America and for the last three years I had a spinal cord injury so we knew what was available and what support there was; which was very little. It was good to get involved with Aspire through the ‘Walkers’ group at Stanmore when we came back to England so that we had a support network.”

Leon applied for an Aspire Grant to buy equipment that would help him to be more independent and allow him to spend time with his family. "I’m so glad we were able to get the Aspire Grant for the Freewheel and Mountain Bike Wheels. I can go off road and it’s helped getting back to, almost, normal life. Snowboarding with Lauren skiing next to me was our "thing", which we’ve struggled to replace; but the new equipment means I can go out with the girls and Amanda on walks and bike rides with the dogs and it helps me to keep active. My regular wheelchair made these things practically impossible. This grant gave me the ability to do these things with my family and meant that I felt included again.”

With your help, we can enable more people like Leon to live an independent life.