IT HAPPENED TO ME:Paddy Slattery has been a quadriplegic since his late teens, but that hasn't stopped him from recording two albums and planning a trip to every country on the planet
I'M 29 years old and have been a quadriplegic since I was 17 when I was involved in a road-traffic accident. I was an apprentice painter and decorator and was hitchhiking home from a job in Lucan. A few of us got a lift to Edenderry and we were thumbing back to our village, Clonbullogue.
Unusually, we got a lift straight away. Although I was the youngest of the lads, for some reason I got into the passenger seat; usually one of the older ones would go up front. I didn't put on the seat belt. I'm not sure why.
Maybe I thought the driver would think I was a wuss or think that I didn't trust him. We passed a fellow I knew on the road, but didn't stop for him.
About 500 yards down the road the accident happened. A van in front of us had a trailer but no indicators on it. At the same time as our car overtook the van, it was attempting to overtake a parked tractor. We were just three miles from home. I could almost smell the dinner.
All I can remember is the sound effects. The sound of smashing and the earth hitting the car. I clenched my body and thought 'I'm in God's hands now'. The car ended up in a ravine and I woke up with my head resting on the brakes and the driver on top of me. My neck was broken.
It was like a scene from a film. I could smell petrol and hear the engine running.
The lads pulled me out onto the road. I knew that something was seriously wrong because even though I could see my legs in front of me I felt they were behind me. I remember looking up into the face of the lad we had passed on the road earlier. I thought 'why the f**k didn't we stop for you?'. If we had we wouldn't have crashed.
My head was sore resting on the road and I asked the guys for something comfortable under my head. When they lifted up my head to put something under it, I heard a terrible crunch. None of us were aware of how to treat a potential spine injury. I didn't have a clue. The only person I knew who had a similar injury was Christopher Reeve.
I had worn my new Sunday coat that day for the first time. When I arrived in the hospital the doctors cut it off me. That almost hurt more than the spinal injury. They put me into traction to stretch the spine. I remember my skull being shaved and seeing a doctor put a bit into a drill. It was like waking up in a nightmare. I was in traction for two weeks.
I was paralysed from the top of my chest down. I have the use of some of my arms and hands but not my fingers. I was told that I was not going to walk again and that there was a 50/50 chance that the operation I was about to undergo would not be successful. If it was a success, my neck would be able to bear the weight of my head. If not, I would be on my back for the rest of my life.
That was a big wake-up call for me. I was determined to prove them wrong. It was the beginning of a trend where I feel I have to prove myself.
While in traction in the Mater Hospital, I developed a pressure sore on the butt of my spine. One of the doctors told me it was so bad that the bone could be seen sticking out. This set my recovery back.
I was transferred to the National Rehabilitation Centre (NRC) and put on a rotorest bed for three months. It rotates you like you are cooking over a spit.
When the accident happened, I was naive enough to think that I would be out in time for a football match which was two weeks later. I spent a year at the NRC.
When they took off my neck collar my neck felt very exposed and weak. My muscles had to re-learn how to support my head. After four months lying down, sitting in a chair was bizarre. It felt like my shoulders and head were sitting on air.
The day was full at the NRC. You wake up, get a shower, have an occupational therapy class, then over to physiotherapy for a few hours, then lunch and possibly back to physio again. In the evening, we were left to chill and watch TV. The attendants on the ward were like saints. They looked after us so well and were good craic.
Moving back home was difficult. My family live in a small house in the middle of the village. Being carried into the house on the first day was so undignified. I didn't want anyone to see me.
Not long after I arrived home, a guy called Michael Nestor came to visit. He founded the Offaly branch of the Centre for Independent Living. He explained the organisation's function, and how it provides people like me with personal assistants for 20 hours a week.
My assistant is PJ Dearing. He has been with me for nine years and is now part of the family. My younger brother Thomas also helps me. He left school at the age of 15 and is employed as my carer. He has been my legs and arms.
Since the accident I have had a lot of time to sit at home and do nothing. I became fascinated with film. I did a film course with the Galway Film Centre a few years ago and have developed two scripts.
One is about a struggling musician who suffers from a nervous breakdown. The other deals with the subject of suicide. I'd love to get them made. I am going back to Galway to do a camera and editing course at the end of the month.
I have also been writing music. The second single to be lifted from my debut album Stand & Deliver was released just before Christmas.
I have taken some time off gigging but hope to get back on the road with the band in April. I am also in the pre-production stages of making a documentary, which will follow me as I travel to every country in the world to highlight issues of inequality.
There are somewhere between 170 and 220 countries in the world, depending on who you talk to. I recently spoke to a guy from National Geographic who said it would cost around €1 million to make the documentary. I think we can do it on much less. I plan to blag, beg, borrow and steal enough money to make it happen.
I've been on to The Guinness Book of Records and I think we can break a couple of records in the process. I also hope to highlight how music and rhythm can have a healing effect on people on the journey.
When I'm not working on music and film I give talks in schools to kids about road safety and health. I really enjoy it.
I go back up to the NRC every six months for check-ups, X-rays and ultrasounds. I have been quite busy for the last two years and have neglected my health. I tend to get kidney infections quite easily and I have recently been diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome.
I also suffer from autonomic dysreflexia, which can cause very high blood pressure and gives me a headache that I can't even begin to describe. In the past, I have been on the verge of being seriously ill with it. I take tablets to bring down my blood pressure.
I went to a herbalist recently who told me that my whole central nervous system is in a bad way. Right now I am on a detox diet. For the next month it is nothing except vegetable soup, water and a capful of some herbal stuff that tastes like petrol. It was my cousin's 21st birthday recently so I fell off the wagon and had a drink.
I feel that I have been spoiled rotten. If I had this injury 20 years ago I would have been locked in the back room. I am also lucky that I come from a family of eight. There is always someone around. My dad and brothers are building a recording studio and physiotherapy room for me at the back of the garden.
I have a very optimistic outlook. I believe that no situation is too bleak for anyone to deal with; otherwise they would not have been put in that situation.
In conversation with Fiona Tyrrell
[ www.paddyslattery.comOpens in new window ]
Readers are invited to write in about their own experiences of the health service, good or bad. Responses should be sent to healthsupplement@irish-times.ie