I am a happily married man with two children aged 7 and 8 and three step children aged between 21 and 26.
In November 2017 all was well when suddenly I had chest pains whilst driving home, it got so bad that I had to pull over and my wife called an ambulance. When it arrived I was taken inside for an ecg. They said that they weren’t sure and would forward the results to Morriston hospital but take me to Carmarthen hospital unless they were told different. So off we go and suddenly the ambulance driver shouts to his mate in the back that Morriston want him and he puts his foot down so that i really feel the ambulance accelerating and the blues and twos go on. I think shit that I am really in trouble and am thinking that i am not going to make it.
I then have two weeks of memory loss, during which I have 3 stents put in, am discharged a couple of days later and then six days later my wife and I are in bed when I have a cardiac arrest. My wife does CPR and brings me back, i am rushed to hospital and have a series of cardiac arrests and they put me in an induced coma.
It is not obvious at first why I can no longer move my legs, after an mri they discover that I had a blood clot that damaged my spinal cord at T10 (incomplete). They put an ICD in me so that I be shocked automatically if my heart stops again.
I spend 3 months in rehab (some 5 months in total in hospital) when i get to come home for good and have to get used to having a spinal cord injury