Member

I will never forget that when I was beginning my slow and painful recovery following neurosurgery 30 years ago, it was not the intense pain or the absolute exhaustion which nearly killed me, but rather the shocking and brutal awareness that some of the nursing and medical staff’s expectations for my recovery and life chances were so unbelievably low. There was I, a young man who, only 24 hours earlier, had taken a call from a Minister confirming that a charity campaign I had led had secured £50 million, suddenly reduced to being unable to speak, swallow or even breathe independently—crushed by the cultural presumption that, as a disabled person, I should have minimal expectations for the rest of my life.