A Life Less Vertical Radio 4
It’s 2010, journalist Melanie Reid is in a spinal unit in Glasgow after falling from her horse.
She broke her neck; she is paralysed from the shoulders down.
And back then, she was thinking: “This is all a mistake, I have a son, a husband, a busy career, I shouldn’t be here.”
Her tears are dripping off the collar around her neck.
“Things will get better,” says a small voice.
It’s a schoolgirl in a wheelchair.
She’s just a kid and out of the blue she’s trying to console Melanie who thinks that she’s had four decades of a working body – this is a little girl aged 15 years old, who has been in a car accident and is not long out of an induced coma.
This is a look back on a year spent in that hospital with others like her: “A fellowship of the damned” she says.
The young girl was Danielle.
Next to Melanie Reid was Karen – two middle-aged women on a hospital ward.
One fell off a horse, the other fell out of bed - but with the same tragic result.
Then there was David, a lawyer from Edinburgh who got on a shuttle at Heathrow and when the plane landed he was unable to stand up … it was a spinal stroke.
He said his faith gave him great help.
Each and every one of these stories was tragic – what happened seemed cruel, but 10 years on, people’s lives have moved on and although theirs are lived in a less vertical way, they are, nevertheless, precious lives.
Yes, watching others dance in the way that you used to may be way too painful.
Spinal injuries “scrape your soul”.
But, says Reid, who has the magical power of words, life is very precious, family and close friends matter.
The stories of her fellow travellers on that ward do not make easy listening.
Daniel confesses that he did not become paralysed in an abseiling accident as everyone thought – he had, in fact, been trying to take his own life.
But he felt such shame and he wanted so much to protect his family and friends from the ugly truth.
Out of the ashes of such tragedy, Reid has risen to live her precious life – albeit a more confined one in her fortress of a home – and to reach out to people with her writing – her aptly named Spinal Column.
She is cut-throat honest about what this life-changing accident has meant, not just for her, but for her partner: “You make them a prisoner of your circumstance too”.
But listen to this for what it offers from those who have been through the fire – the one precious life; the deep love of family and close friends.
This is stoicism in the face of adversity and that final uplifting message that there is always joy to be found somewhere.
