When I finally left hospital, I had a choice. I could spend my life thinking about everything that had gone wrong, or I could make the best of a bad situation.
I decided I was going to live—and I meant properly live.
Before I became ill, I had the physical ability to do almost anything without giving it much thought. Like most people, I probably took that freedom for granted. After leaving hospital in a wheelchair, everything became more difficult—but strangely, life also became more exciting. I began noticing the fun in every opportunity and appreciating experiences that I might once have treated as ordinary.
My attitude became simple: if there was something I could do, I was going to try it.
So I went bungee jumping. Apparently, hanging upside down from a giant elastic band seemed like a sensible way to celebrate surviving brain surgery!
I learned to ski, proving that snow, speed and a wheelchair user with determination can make a very interesting combination. I also went up in a hot-air balloon. It was peaceful, beautiful and slightly strange to be floating through the sky in what was basically an enormous basket.
I wanted to go skydiving too, but they would not let me. I had survived a brain tumour, major surgery and two years in hospital—but apparently jumping out of a perfectly good aeroplane was where somebody finally decided I needed protecting!
Being told no did not stop me from finding other adventures.
I went on holiday as often as I could, travelled around the world and took on all kinds of new challenges. Every journey gave me another story, another memory and another reminder that my life had not ended when I became disabled.
In many ways, I enjoyed life more after becoming ill than I had before. That might sound strange, but illness changed the way I looked at everything. Before, I could do these things easily, so I did not always recognise how special they were. Afterwards, every adventure felt like an achievement. Every laugh mattered more. Every journey meant freedom.
Of course, life was not suddenly easy. Travelling with a disability could turn even the simplest plan into a military operation. There was equipment, accessibility, transport and the familiar question: “Will the wheelchair fit?” But I refused to let those difficulties become the whole story.
The real story was that I was alive, I was free and I was making my own choices.
Those were my Freedom Years. I was not sitting quietly and watching life pass me by. I was travelling, laughing, learning, taking risks and discovering just how much was still possible.
I had been through something terrible, but I was determined to squeeze every bit of enjoyment out of the life I still had.
And apart from skydiving, I did a pretty good job of it.