A year ago, the lives of my family changed forever.  Barely a week after my 18th birthday celebrations ended, my mum had a life changing car accident.  I woke up on the morning of the 22nd of May 2022 to missed calls and messages of urgency. After calling my uncle back I heard words that never in a millions years did I think I would hear when it came to my mother “there’s been an accident” he said. As I listened to him explain more, my heart broke and I felt so many feelings of sadness and guilt and ‘what ifs’ Despite his reassurances, I would soon find out that the extent of my mother’s injuries were a lot worse than I could’ve ever imagined.  Myself and my younger brothers would be so grateful if you read the details below and if you able to help in any way, then that would be incredible, but words of support are so welcome too. It is a scary time for us right now but we are determined to do the best we can. My mum is a 41 year old single parent of 4 children. She’s done her absolute best in raising me and my siblings after the passing of our father in 2013. The youngest of us is 10 and I am 18. She has always been our rock. She is strong, protective, fun and kind, and we miss her so much. At long last, after almost a year in hospital, my mum is home. And unfortunately this is where our problem lies. Her injury was a severed spinal cord at the nape of her neck and doctors told her that lifelong paralysis was more than likely.  In her time in hospital she’s been told to focus the most on what she can do rather than what she feels like she can’t. She’s come really far with her arms. She has neurone damage which means that her brains signals don’t work in the same way that they did before, which in turn means that she can’t control her arms and fingers in the same way as she used too. We’re told that there’s no guarantee of her function ever being the same. They say that when it comes to an injury like hers, the most improvements/ recovery happens in the first 6 months, and yet for the first three months after her accident my mum was having issues with mucus in her lungs and her breathing and then her blood pressure, and then the fact that we were patiently waiting for her to be taken to Stoke Mandeville’s national spinal injuries unit, we started to become scared of how far her recovery would go.   Due to the nature and severity of the injury she was featured on BBC show- 'Surgeons, At The Edge of Life'  Her surgery was carried out by doctors Mark Kotter and Souyma Mukherjee at Addenbrookes hospital in Cambridge, it was to move her spine back into place after being completely displaced right at the top where it connects to her head. The episode goes into detail about her surgery and her accident, and the risks and issues that she’s been left with.   I’m still coming to terms with the fact that my life may not ever be the way that it was before. People who know my mum know her as a proud woman, a woman who asks for nothing, a woman who makes it all happen for me and my brothers and has always gone above and beyond for us to have anything and everything we’ve ever needed or wanted and now it is my turn to attempt to return the favour, and make her life as manageable as possible, despite the challenges. The home that we live in is completely unsuitable for someone in a wheelchair. Our only bathroom is upstairs, all our bedrooms are upstairs and our hallways and doors are narrow as to be expected in an end of the road British house.  A solution to these issues could be an extension at the back for a bathroom that would be suitable for all of my mother’s needs. The issue with the idea of an extension is that the potential funding my mother will receive, is not at all enough for all the work that needs to be done to our home. So we’re stuck between the option of a micro environment where my mum can’t move around freely in her own house, as well as being confined to one room, while we hope and wait for the possibility of another property to become available with no timeframe available for how long that might take, or somehow managing to raise the money for an extension at the back of our home for a bathroom/wet room and create an easier path into the garden and kitchen and wider doorframes etc. On top of this, she has no funding for physiotherapy which is over £120 per session due to us having to find a private provider who would be able to help with the extent of her injuries, so as well as providing for four children, grocery shopping, bills, and the hope of getting an extension in the close future; she still has to find a way to pay for her own physio and it’s scary to think that all this time that we’re unable to afford to start building work, or physio sessions we’re wasting crucial time that could be going towards her recovery. Ibelieve so strongly that she didn’t deserve the cards that she was dealt in this lifetime, and I want to do everything in my power to make the rest of her life better than the past 20 years.  Thank you so much for your time x Best Wishes Priya Kaur <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001h9gc/surgeons-at-the-edge-of-life-series-5-1-major-trauma-back-from-the-brink" title=""><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001h9gc/surgeons-at-the-edge-of-life-series-5-1-major-trauma-back-from-the-brink" target="_blank" class="" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001h9gc/surgeons-at-the-edge-of-life-series-5-1-major-trauma-back-from-the-brink</a></a>

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my mum’s spinal cord injury

my mum’s spinal cord injury

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