Fraser looks out at the large garden in Hertfordshire where he and
his three brothers used to run around with a freedom he can only imagine
now. “The first surgery was unsuccessful,” Fraser recalls after his
spinal cord had been severed and crushed when he dived in the sea in
Portugal in 2009. Surgeons spent seven hours trying to re-align the
vertebrae. “Before the second surgery my heart kept stopping because I
had a pacemaker. I couldn’t breathe myself, couldn’t even talk. The
pacemaker box was next to my head so I wasn’t sleeping. The second
surgery was so huge because they had to open up the back of my neck [and
screw the damaged vertebrae into place]. I felt even worse than before.
“I
was on so many drugs because I’d also contracted MRSA and pneumonia and
my mind was all over the shop. I had visions that everything was going
to be fine and I would move again. But your mind takes you to places you
never knew existed and you think the worst thoughts. My heart stopped a
couple more times and I thought: ‘I could die today. How much more do I
have to take? And then you’re told: ‘You’ll never be able to move your
arms and legs again.’ You think: ‘This is just too much.’
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