immediate aftermath of events that occurred during a routine training exercise in July 2014.
Speaking with the calmness you’d expect from someone
There’s quite a lot that goes through your mind. I certainly was borderline close at that
have cried, it was absolutely amazing.” point, I didn’t know what had happened to me, but I knew it was bad.” Jamie’s self-diagnosis was accurate, he had suffered an unstable fracture to his spinal cord and fractures to his feet and ankles. He was lucky to be alive, and he knew it. “The pain was quite excruciating, especially through the back. The feet I wasn’t too concerned with,” he says, almost brushing off the fact that he had split his heel bone, one of the strongest bones in the body. “I did feel like I had put both my feet through my boots and into the concrete floor. The impact was quite horrendous.” Following the accident, Jamie’s colleague was taken to hospital by air ambulance, while Jamie was given a police escort to Coventry University Hospital, where he remained for 12 days,
Shout!
undergoing a complicated and lengthy operation to construct a complex titanium framework around his spine and severely damaged thoracic vertebra. Once out of hospital he was then confined to a hospital bed in his dining room at home for a further four and a half months, an ordeal that was as much psychological as it was physical for this selfconfessed positive thinker. “Mentally it has been horrific,” says Jamie. “I’m quite a positive person and I like to think that I can overcome anything, but this has been very testing. Silly little things on a day to day basis… you can’t pick a piece of paper up off the floor, you can’t put your socks on, your wife is having to bed bath you every day and your children, being quite young, don’t fully understand, they think you’re going to get better really quickly, so four and a half months in a hospital bed is quite testing.”
Father to 11-year old Eleanor and nine-year-old Sophie, the physical restrictions placed upon Jamie following his accident have, he admits, had far-reaching emotional repercussions on his family life. “As far as picking my children up, it’s quite horrific. I still haven’t picked my [youngest] daughter up and she’s nine, she’s quite a small nine, but I still haven’t picked her up and we’re 10 months and two weeks down the line… that hurts.” As soon as it was safe for him to do so, Jamie embarked on a road to recovery that has since seen him working with physios through the fire service, as well as a number of back, knee, ankle and feet specialists, progressing from a wheelchair to crutches and eventually – through sheer hard work and determination – to unaided walking. However, Jamie
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attributes much of his incredible progress to two intensive rehabilitation programmes he has attended at Marine Court. A long term donor, Jamie had been giving to the Charity through his payroll and by playing the Fire Fighters Lottery for years before his accident. He was also aware of what services he was eligible for, having been visited at his station by a Charity Fundraiser who had spoken to his whole watch and explained the work of the Charity. Keen to make progress in his rehabilitation, Jamie called the Charity to find out whether he could attend one of the centres and, a few weeks later, found himself settling in to the Littlehampton base, about to start his first week’s rehabilitation. However, it wasn’t just the prospect of making progress with his physical rehabilitation that appealed to Jamie.