Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

‘All donations will be received by Aspire - a national spinal cord injury charity who will manage the fund. As a charity, Aspire will claim any Gift Aid on my behalf, meaning Gift Aid donations will go further in supporting me. Aspire will receive a percentage of the total fund, allowing them to continue their vital services in supporting me, and others like me.’

I am raising money to help with my transition back to my new "normal" life, Thanks for taking the time to read my story below,

Tuesday 27th August 2024,

The day started off pretty much as any day does in our household, we all got up got dressed had breakfast with the kids and I got ready to go out and do some work, we had only just got back from a small family staycation in North Wales, we had had a great time and as usual there was a little bit of post holiday blues but we had started to plan what we were all going to do for next years break,

I was a self employed chippy by trade but had found a little niche in my local market doing maintenance and repairs on properties in my surrounding area, a lot of the work was coming from a long standing family friend who has a little portfolio of rental properties, some of which I had helped with the initial works when the family friend had been building up the portfolio some 20+ years ago, he had asked me before we went away if I could take a look at his barn roof where he lived. there was some cracks that had appeared in the corrugated sheets on the roof and he wanted to get it watertight before the winter, he had got the builders equipment stored there from when we were building the portfolio and the farm machinery there to take care of the grounds of the house and stables,

NOT really my sort of job, I'm not all that great with heights never have been but I figured if I set the job up properly with ladders tied in and crawl boards set up properly I could manage it, I would literally be using the boards for crawling up anyway, So we had been back from our little break with the kids about 5 days and the weather was good, so I loaded up the equipment and set off to his place, set everything up securely and made a start, there were quite a few hairline cracks in the sheets so I started at one end and moved along periodically with the equipment to do section after section on the roof,

Lunchtime came around and I was running out of the repair tape I was sealing the cracks up with so I came down let him know I was going to grab another couple of rolls from the supplier and a sandwich, I'd finished more than 3/4 of the whole roof and I wouldn't be long. I drove back in to the local town to the merchants grabbed the two rolls I needed to finish, a sandwich from the local supermarket, headed back to the van, thought I'd better check in with the wife so gave her a call, We talked about where I had got to with the job and that I reconned there was about another hour and a half's work tops and Id be home to run her to her meeting at work with loads of time. I drove back to the job site, I remember seeing the owners granddaughter, she was riding her bike whilst her mum was tending to her pony, the granddaughter she always came over to speak to me if she was there whilst I was, I cant recall what she had to say, but its usually something she had learned in the last few days, something that she thought was a very interesting fact or a bit of scientific knowledge that she felt was important to know.

Here's where my life was going to change forever....

I don't remember getting back up on the roof, I don't even remember climbing the ladder, there's about 30 minutes from here to the worst accident I've ever had, I recall somewhat inaccurately laying on the hard cold concrete floor inside the barn, I cant say that I felt any pain at all, I seem to remember it was dark like midnight kind of dark outside, but that's not possible it was peak summer and it could have only been 3.30pm, I remember the owner, the long standing family friend kneeling down beside me saying "don't panic Steve the ambulance is on its way" then noting for a short while, I was transferred by road ambulance to the local hospital, the crew wanted to commandeer the helipad for the air ambulance, couldn't have the air ambulance land where the job site is its all equestrian land and full of horses that would have had the bejesus scared out of them by a helicopter landing, Kent Sussex and Surry Air Ambulance took me from the local hospital to Kings College Hospital in London, My first ever helicopter ride and I miss it being unconscious. Seriously I cant thank the KSS Air Ambulance enough for what they did to help they are an amazing charity and without them scores of people wouldn't make it through some of the more serious accidents that occur like mine,

I wake up in the High Dependency Unit having had emergency spinal surgery, two days later, I had had some sort of reaction to the anesthetic which caused my body temperature to skyrocket meaning they had to put me in a medically induced coma and wait for my body temperature to normalize prior to waking me up, My wife is there along with a handful of doctors and health care assistants, That's when they break it to me, I'd had a serious fall, I had sustained a L1 ASIA C fracture to my spine which needed emergency surgery to correct with metal rods and screws and just to top it off Mr. Hicks, you have also broken 5 ribs on your right hand side,

It transpires that after the point where I don't remember anything having got back to the jobsite I've gotten back up on the roof of the barn, I've gone up my crawl boards to the ridge and for some very unbeknown reason I've stepped off the crawl platform and gone through the sheets on the roof at the very top, 21ft, 6.1m from the ridge to a solid concrete floor below, must have been one heck of a splat, but to take away from this, yes I've had this disastrous fall, yes I've broken my ribs and my spine, but I've picked the only spot of the roof to fall through where there was no equipment or machinery to land on impaling myself and I've not gone head first on to the concrete either, both of which would most likely have resulted in my death.

I must have been on some really good medications because the next few weeks at Kings is all a little blurred in to one, I was waiting on having my stitches removed after the surgery, at the 10 day post opp point they removed the wound drain that was inside the wound, at day 14 they took the stitches out, that's when my next round of bad luck began. Day 15 was a Saturday, my wife was coming to visit with the kids and the duty staff nurse had this plan to help me get up and dressed so that I could borrow a wheelchair and go for a breath of fresh air outside the hospital, I was going to have my breakfast and then get ready, in the 15 minutes it took me to consume my bowl of cornflakes and drink my cup of tea, I lost all functions that I had below my injury level, I couldn't move my legs like i could less than 20 minutes before, there was some what a panic amongst the staff even though they were trying to to show it, I was whipped off down stairs in minutes for an MRI scan, naturally not knowing anything about the metalwork that they use in surgery and the fact that the M in MRI stands for Magnetic, I was petrified that this machine was going to rip my spine out when they turned the machine on, I made the radiographer swear on her life that wasn't going to happen, anyhow it wasn't ripped out when the machine was turned on, The consultants had requested loads of images some with contrast some without unfortunately after about 45 minutes of scans in a room that was rather hot I couldn't go on with any more and they had to stop, turns out that I had a really bad spinal infection, all the time the drain was in and the little stitch holes were open there was room for it to be in there as soon as it was trapped inside that's when the problems began.

I went down the following morning for more emergency surgery, this time for them to open up the same wound site as before and clean out the infection, I know that I was down in surgery for about 5 hours, not sure how that reflects on the severity of the infection all i was told was it was quite bad. Every single day for the next two weeks twice a day I had to roll over so they could expose the new wound and check on it, but there was a problem, I was continually leaking spinal fluid, it continued to leak not just for the two weeks it should usually take to heal, but we waited for a third week, still with it leaking just as bad as it was on day one of post opp no 2, This was a Sunday afternoon three weeks after the spinal wound clean, the duty doctor came around and took a look, she said that it wasn't a good sign and it probably wasn't going to be great news later in the afternoon. My consultant had been contacted and the team at the hospital had decided amongst themselves that my Immune system had decided to attack the metal work around my spine, which was causing the wound to leak and the metal work was going to have to come out, Spark immediate panic in myself, I asked what the plan was they had said I needed a third surgery to remove the metal work, I asked if they were replacing it with something else,, to be told no, But wait a minute, what going to be holding me together in the middle? what's the first sentence out of my mouth! you don't have to worry about that I was told, you've already been healing for 5 weeks, your going to be another 2 after this surgery the metal work is only holding your spine still whilst it starts to heal, a bit like a plaster cast on your arm, accept its inside your body and made of metal, you will be fine after the surgery as your broken spinal bones have already healed far enough that this wont be an issue.

Surgery no 3, It was the Monday, I had been nil-by-mouth since 4am, I asked if ward staff knew what sort of time I would be going down for surgery? They didn't really know, an emergency had come in and as soon as that was dealt with I would be next, no word of a lie the whole day just seemed to drag on buy whilst I was waiting, It had came to about 645pm and I was really wondering if this was even going to happen today, as just then someone with a couple of porters came to collect me, I thought it was a bit late in the day for this sort of thing but apparently there is an adequately trained and qualified surgeon on site 24 hours a day working in shift pattens, so in to theatre for a third time I went, as I came around I was in a similar suite to the HDU of the first day but where as the first day it was private individual rooms this was a ward, I wasn't there for very long before being sent back to the David Marsden Ward, have to say they were as persistent checking this wound this time as they did the second time, twice a day every single day, after two weeks the wound had completely healed there were no signs of infection at all, and I was discharged from Kings College back to my Local Hospital, that wasn't so great but i was only there for 23 hours, my local hospital has a surgery department but doesn't do anything neurologically based so the ward staff weren't really sure to do with me, I was transferred to another hospital still within the district of my local hospital but they had a generalized neurological department so it was better than nothing. I did start my rehabilitation there but it was hard going, i had been laid up for so long in Kings College all of my muscles had started to fade away, I had also lost 1/6th of my body weight.

Two weeks past, I had graduated from being bed rest only to a recliner chair type wheelchair for a maximum of 4 hours a day, being within a bus ride from home I was able to see my wife, kids and even my doggo for a while, I was waiting one morning at the end of the two week period for my physio to show up he was late, he had never been late, and he was a lot late when he suddenly appeared, he had the ward consultant with him and a member of the occupational therapy team, I've got some news for you Mr. Hicks he said as he entered the room, I wasn't sure if this was a good sign or not at that present moment, we have received a telephone call from Stoke Mandeville Hospital, not only have we secured you a place for their rehabilitation program, they can take you tomorrow.

I've been here at the National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville Hospital now for just over 11 weeks, I've been doing ok, I've had some problems, some ups and some down but I'm getting there, I can do so much more Independently than I could before I arrived here, I'm slowly coming to terms with the fact the spinal cord damage I have done has partially paralyzed my right leg, That I've got months more rehabilitation in front of me here and at home, and that I may or may not ever gain enough function of my leg again to enable me to walk short distances, My focuses now are my rehabilitation plan to get home, what needs to be done at home so that my environment is safe and practical, I'm hopeful that ill be able to gain access to the Disabilities Facilities Fund to make the big adjustments at home in the not too distant future, but I'm very aware of the lead times for the releasing of funds and the contractors to do the work.

There is some other stuff around the home that I need to get done that will make life easier for me and will allow me to re-integrate with my family at home, yes social services will do the essentials like providing grabrails around the toilet, and for now turning the downstairs front room in to a micro environment for my return but there are some things that they wont do because they have deemed them "impractical". I'm not one to hold out a begging bowl, I didn't even want to talk to the local press when I had my accident and get my 15 minutes of fame in the local online news papers. I need ideally to start with find the funds to get a new bed for mine and my wife's bedroom, ideally so that we can share the same bed, so that I'm not sleeping alone downstairs in the crowded front room and she's sleeping upstairs in the bedroom, I've not even been able to lay on the bed with my wife and just have a hug in nearly 6 months.

Well if you have got to this point of my story, thank you for sticking it out I really appreciate it, If you could share this listing from Just giving I'd appreciate that to and if you could spare a donation to my pot your not only helping me out your helping out Aspire out too who offer support to people and their families who like me have suffered a spinal cord injury.

Thanks for reading.