1
The Accident
I was only 12 when the catastrophe occurred. On the 1st of November, I was around a mate’s house. We were messing around in his garden. There was a zip wire already set up in one of the trees and we couldn’t resist but have a go. That’s when it happened. I didn’t realise I wasn’t secured in the rope properly, lost my grip and fell about 10-15 feet. I landed on my head! Tim, one of my closest friends rushed to check if I was alright after witnessing my fall. As he got closer to my body he became aware of the extent of my injury and became scared. I uttered no sound. I was unconscious, unable to hear Tim’s shouts and screams.
This was weird that I couldn’t hear Tim’s voice seeing as though myself and him were best friends and I went to school with Tim on a daily basis, we had spent, shared so many jokes and pranks together whether it be at school or out of school. The driveway to Tim’s house was off a remote country lane, it had a row of tall trees down both sides. There was a huge garden running the length of the driveway and at the end there was a long bungalow and this was Tim’s family home. Tim lived here with his Mum, Dad, one older brother; Sam, and two younger brothers; Luke and Matt.
Tim alerted his brothers Matt and Luke to be at my side while he sprinted to the phone and dialled 999. I had only been at Tim’s house an hour when disaster had struck. We had planned to go to the Horsham fair that afternoon to meet Alex, another close friend of ours. Alex lived and worked on his family’s livestock farm just outside Horsham. Tim and I found we had some time to spare before we had to leave for the fair, so we decided to play on the zip wire that spanned the two largest oak trees in Tim’s back garden.
It took twenty minutes for the ambulance to arrive. From the time my head had hit the ground I was drifting in and out of consciousness.
“What’s this young man’s name?” asked one of the paramedics.
“Chris, Christopher Manson” Tim replied.
The paramedics kept trying to ask me questions to check my level of consciousness and for possible brain damage. They persevered with questions like, “what is your name....how old are you?” They also asked if I had been on a zip wire before. I was unable to answer. The paramedics then carefully put me on a stretcher and carried me to the ambulance. They then gave up asking me questions and started talking to Tim and his parents, who were huddled together in fear by the back of the ambulance. At one point I must of stayed conscious long enough to recognise Tim’s voice in the background.
“I don’t know how I am going to tell the rest of the class tomorrow that this has happened to Chris and I haven’t even told his friend Alex yet!”
We set off towards the accident and emergency department at the Princess Royal Hospital in nearby Haywards Heath. Tim’s Dad, Terry, came with me and Tim and my other friends stayed behind to enjoy Luke’s birthday party. Terry was distraught. He was frantically rummaging around in his bag to find his mobile. He knew he had to spill the beans to my parents. He was anxious about this and extremely concerned about me. At this point I was unconscious.
In the ambulance one of the paramedics looked after me in the back, whilst the other one concentrated on driving. The paramedic driving was in contact with the hospital telling them my details, the circumstance of my accident and my current condition, so that the doctors would be ready for me when I arrived. The ambulance flashed through the lanes of Horsham with the sirens blaring all the way.
On arrival at the Princess Royal Hospital, the doors to the ambulance were immediately opened from outside, where lots of medical staff were gathered, including my Mum. I was taken straight out of the ambulance and wheeled into the intensive care room where loads of doctors started to work on me. After what seemed to be a very long time, my Mum was allowed to see me briefly. I was then whisked off to have a CT scan on my head. There followed a lengthy discussion as to what they were going to do with me next.
From the numerous tests, the doctors concluded that I had sustained a severe head injury and would need to go to a specialist unit in London for further treatment. It could be either a unit at Kings College Hospital in South London or at the Atkinson Morley Hospital in Wimbledon, depending on which one had an ITU bed available first. The final decision could not be made until the last minute as situations are changing all the time on ITU wards. The next decision to be made was how I was going to get there. Should they use an Air Ambulance or send me in an ambulance by road? In the end they decided to send a specialist team of two doctors and a nurse down from London to accompany me in the ambulance.
I was then wheeled through the corridors from the accident and emergency department to the back of the hospital. Here I was pushed through an adjoining corridor to the specialist Hurstwood Park Neurological Unit. This is where the doctors got me ready for the team from Atkinson Morley to take me to their specialist Neurological Unit in Wimbledon. By now my right eye had swollen to the size of a tennis ball. I had all sorts of tubes going into me and a ventilator tube had been pushed down into my lungs to breathe for me. A neck collar was placed around my neck for protection and I was lying on a spinal board in case I had broken any bones in my neck or back.
It took a number of hours for the team of doctors and nurses to stabilize me for the journey up to London. Finally, I was ready and the specialist team had arrived to accompany me. My Mum unfortunately wasn’t able to accompany me, as there was no remaining room in the back of the ambulance. Luckily she had been able to contact my Uncle who would drive her, as my Mum was in no fit state to travel up to London alone.
I was loaded into the back of the ambulance and once secure we set off. As my condition was critical, the ambulance driver had to drive quite carefully. The slightest jolt could have been fatal. It took about an hour and a half to get to Wimbledon, but at least I arrived safely. I was then met by a new team of doctors and nurses who had already been brought up to date with my condition. They also planned to carry out a whole load of new tests to see what could be done to help me. At that time my Mum still hadn’t arrived.
I was wheeled down to the very last bed in ITU. They transferred me from the trolley to the bed with the usual “On my command one, two, three...” that you hear in all the popular TV hospital dramas. Little did I know that I would be hearing those words about twenty times a day for the next eighteen months?
It wasn’t long after that my Mum and Uncle Bernard had arrived. There continued to be lots of people frantically doing things around my bed. The medical staff were trying to get me to do all kinds of things like move my arms and legs, asking me whether I could hear them and testing to see if I reacted to pain by jabbing me with needles throughout my body. These were all the things that doctors did to test for brain activity, to judge how badly hurt I was. It was then decided to sedate me so that I could have a nice sleep to give my body a chance to heal.