Dear me...
Paul was involved in a life-threatening cycling accident in 2022. He suffered multiple broken bones and major organ damage. After years of recovery, he discovered Day One. Paul is now a volunteer for the charity, helping to give others hope for their future.
Dear Paul,
What the hell have you got yourself into!
You have just awoken in an ICU bed with a machine connected to your throat that is breathing for you. You have been told you have been in a serious accident and you have been in hospital unconscious for eight weeks. What a shock!
You can’t move due to all your rib fractures, you can’t eat or drink, and you can’t speak to ask questions. You can’t ask if you’re going to survive, or how long you’re likely to be in hospital, or if you’ll ever recover. Your internal organs have been shattered. Your aorta was torn and your kidneys are not functioning, so you will need dialysis to survive.
It’s almost too much to take in. It is too much to take in!
Well, I’m here to tell you to just hang on.
I know that is easier said than done, and that you will feel like you want to give up the fight to survive: the pain, despite the drugs; the fear that you will never recover from these injuries; the burden you feel you will be on your family; the long, long nights which seem to drift on forever, with only the bleeps from the tracheostomy machine to reassure you that you are still breathing.
Because the nights will end. There will be better days ahead, although you can’t imagine them now. I know you can be strong and push through this to get off the trachy, out of ICU, onto the major trauma ward, into rehab and eventually home.
It’s going to be the toughest thing you will ever do, but you will be stronger for it in the end. You will realise how precious and fragile this life is. You will appreciate every day with your family and see all the wonders of the world that you have been taking for granted all this time. You will realise when you look back that the little things were really the big things! You’ll be strong again, in fact even stronger.
Your family and friends will be there to help you every step of the way. You will never believe this now, but with courage and a will to survive, you will breathe again, your kidneys will function again, you will drink again, eat again, sit up again, stand again, walk again, be pain free again and see the sun again.
Remember to take your recovery slowly. Don’t push to speed up recovery or you will only go backwards for a while.
Two years from now you will be asked to write a letter to yourself, and guess what? This is the letter you have written! But don’t worry, you won’t turn out like Biff in Back to the Future!
So, one last thought for you my friend: “Dum spiro spero”
From Paul
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