We agreed that we'd be upbeat and positive whenever we were with Jackie in the hospital.  So we'd go in, smile, tell her the family news, then leave the ward, burst into tears and drive home.  Years later, Jackie told us that she did much the same.  So we'd all be bright for each other, and then black after.  But as a family we all pulled each other through.

It was a hugely traumatic time.  Pam and I lost a tremendous amount of weight as you just don't eat.  I would go to work and cope with giving lectures or conducting car or motorcycle tests, but as soon as I sat down on my own I would just burst into tears.  On other occasions a piece of music would come on, or someone could speak to you in a kind way, and inexplicably it would set you off again.  Pam and I would take it in turns to answer the phone as that always got us going.  And we couldn't make love as we'd just burst into tears, thinking that our daughter would never get to have a partner and a life like this, it played havoc with our sex life.  Of course, Jackie did marry some years later and when we walked up the aisle, with her in callipers, there wasn't a dry eye in the house - mine included!

As a family we all pulled each other through

We were both always very honest with each other.  And in those early days, very stupidly, we both said to one another, 'she'd be better off dead.'  We couldn't see a life for her.  When you look back now at all the things she's done and achieved, you realise just how stupid that was.  But at the time you just can't accept the enormity of the change that she, at the age of 17, would have to face for the rest of her life.

We desperately wanted to have her home with us but there was no way that we'd have been able to get her up to her bedroom, so we had to have work done to our house.  We couldn't put a lift in so we had to make a bedroom for her downstairs along with an accessible bathroom and an open-space kitchen.  The uphill gravel driveway had to go and be replaced by tarmac.  The whole aspect of the house had to change which was a shame, but you do anything for your children.  We coped with the changes quite well, though it was traumatic to have the builders in, not listening to what we were telling them.  When they made mistakes, it felt like the final straw.  And although it was the only way to get Jackie home, we hated saying goodnight to her and leaving her downstairs as we went up to bed; it seemed wrong.

We had our first family holiday after the accident in Majorca.  It was so hard, and another tearful time.  We'd always taken the kids away, and we'd said that we always would.  But we were in a sensitive state, and we had people staring at us when we went out with her in her wheelchair.  And it was all so restrictive; there were steps and hills everywhere, access was terrible, and doorways were so narrow.  In the years that followed, I always took a toolbox with us so that I could take the doors off so Jackie could get through them.

It is only when you see her overcome yet another obstacle that it reminds you of the difficulties that she faces daily without complaint.  Jackie's nickname has always been 'Smiler' and it is her ability to do that no matter what that has kept us going and given all of us such a lot of laughs along the way.

Go back to the stories