'My stupid decision left me paralyzed'

BBC ^ | May 29 | BBC News

[RandFan]

One night when he was 18, Steven Webb dived into an open air swimming pool and his life changed forever. He hit his head on the bottom of the pool and was paralysed from the neck down. Now aged 48, he has been elected mayor of his home city. This is his journey from rock bottom to a place where he hopes to help others, as told to Miles Davis.

It was a Sunday night, 1 September 1991. I know it was 10:31 because I looked at my watch just before I dived into the pool.

It was an open air pool at Truro School. We were trespassing but we'd done it lots of times before.

I dived in off the top of the wall at the deep end like I had done many times. This time I hit the bottom with my head and a massive shock went through my body.

I tried to swim to the surface but I couldn't move my arms. I couldn't swim anywhere. I started to run out of breath and panicked then my friends swam down and pulled me to the surface.

'I'll never walk again'

I had broken my fifth cervical bone and it went right through my spinal cord. I spent 12 months in hospital.

I had to have a tube in my throat but it went badly and meant I couldn't speak for several months.

I could only communicate through tapping - once for yes, twice for no.

I knew I was paralysed but still thought I would walk out of there.

Then the doctors came and said I would probably never walk again. They were telling me how complicated my life was going to become.

I came home to a different life. It ages you, I suppose, spiritually.............

[logi_cal869]

Open air pool: Outside, as opposed to inside.
.i.e., ‘No roof.’

‘Outdoor pool’ is appropriate; ‘open air’ is just moronic English language specificity and merely one result of decades of paying so-called ‘academics’ to do nothing but study the supposed vagaries of language use and write new rules.

Sort of like Congress. /s

[Vaduz]

Teenage years are the most dangerous years of your life stupidity cells go at rapid speed take the dare watch this they will like me if I do it.............................

Only a few learn how to think before acting no mater what you tell a teenager their friends know better in their mind.
I’m amazed of how many old teenagers I have seen in my life time.

[StAnDeliver]

"Remember in the UK Liberal Democrat means something different than the term liberal democrat in the U.S."

Yes, it's the party of Clegg and Swinson and a small pool of other like-minded anti-Brexit morons who didn't take the "L" and are now working at a fish & chips shoppe...

[Jonty30]

The darn fool was lucky indeed.