S3 E9: When Your Body Changes: Grief, Disability and Finding Purpose Again | S3 Ep 9

Hello, and welcome to another edition of the Pay Per Living podcast.

And in this one, we're going to talk about grief.

And it's not just going to be about that feeling that you have when somebody close to you has passed or a relationship that has ended.

This is going to be more about the different stages of grief that we go through, but we're going to be talking more about changes to the body.

When we're talking about grief, we can be talking about something like an acquired disability or a physical disability that you've had since birth, more about acquired disability.

Because what we're looking at is where somebody has had a traumatic incident, maybe they've been involved in a car accident, they've been involved in a skiing incident, or whatever it is, and their body has changed.

It can no longer do what it did before.

It can be temporary.

So it can be a sprained ankle, it can be a broken leg, or it can be permanent where you've had, say, a spinal injury that is not going to resolve.

So what we're looking at is how do you deal with that?

What do you do when your body changes and it's not.

And you know it's not going to change back?

There's lots of different aspects to this, but what I thought we'd do before we dive a little bit deeper into some of the physical aspects of it is Claire's going to talk about the different stages of grief and how we go through those stages.

And then we'll come back to me, and I've got an interesting case study for you about somebody who has been through that experience.

And I'll just be talking about how they dealt with it.

When you talked about this, my immediate thought was, well, we were talking about grieving the body that we've lost or not being able to do things that we used to be to do.

I used to do competition ball, rope dancing.

My partner got injured, then I hurt our knee, which Bob has been very helpful with, but it means we can't compete at that level again.

So I have gone through a period of grief for that.

Really?

Not, obviously not on the same scale, but it certainly felt like that.

And I know with my father, he's 85, he's in a wheelchair, hugely frustrated at his whole situation.

And again, there is.

I do think this is almost like one of the.

Or several of the stages of grief that research shows that we go through when somebody actually passes.

And so I just thought I'd talk about those.

Those stages.

So there are, in theory, seven stages of grief.

That we go through.

You might not go through all of them and it's certainly not linear.

So you might jump a few stages and then go back.

You might have a few stages at the same time, but generally there it is known.

The research shows that there are seven stages and the first one, unsurprisingly, is probably shocking.

Like it just.

Your world has changed completely.

The rug has been pulled beneath you and you're in a sort of a state of shock.

The next one is denial.

It's almost like, this isn't happening to me or this can't be happening to me.

The third, which is very, very common, is anger.

And that shows up as frustration and helplessness.

And I think that's why I thought of grief in relation to my dad, because that's exactly where he is with his physical.

The fact that he's in this wheelchair and incredibly frustrated.

The fourth topic, or stage, if you like, is.

Might be a bit of a strange one.

It's called bargaining.

And this is where you try and reason with yourself.

You know, if I'd done something different, if the accident happen, happened, if I'd been somewhere at a different time or all those sliding doors moments, it might not have happened.

And it particularly applies to an accident.

Stage 5 is deep sadness and bordering on depression.

But it's a real, real visceral feeling of sadness.

And then we start to move into a sort of a change phase where that's where we start to test things.

We test and we try and reconstruct our lives.

We try and do things.

We just very gingerly do it because we feel this almost also combined at this stage of fear, guilt, you know, we can't allow ourselves to be happy or we can't allow ourselves to do something different because that's not right.

That doesn't feel right.

The final stage is, which really lasts forever, is acceptance.

And it's about living with the situation and trying to make the best of it, whilst, especially when it's, you know, losing someone, you'll never not miss them and they'll always be with you, but it's accepting that actually you are allowed to move on and live your life.

So I just wanted to go through those because I thought they were relevant to, you know, grieving what we've lost.

I know my ballroom competition, dancing is probably very, very paltry compared to all of this, but, you know, I'm still angry.

Yeah.

But this is.

But this is the thing, it's not paltry, it's not insignificant because you will go through the same.

You will go through the same phases, same as if you, you know, with a broken relationship or something else, you still go through those phases.

And what I have found in my, in my business is that people will go through those phases.

If you've got somebody who's got a case, an episode of severe acute low back pain, which means that they can't walk for more than 5 meters without having to sit down or being in excruciating pain, if you know what the cause is and they know that there's a solution, then they can manage it better.

But if it's a case of they are told that they're going to be in that pain for the rest of their days, then they will definitely go through those, those phases of grief because they know who they were, they know what they were able to do.

And now, now they're being told that they can't do that.

And this is one, this is one of the bugbears for me is because the health service can be very good at not giving people hope.

And I think that it can be very, very pessimistic.

And I think that they do that because if you give someone hope, if you say someone, yeah, you know, you've got a back injury, but it will get better and you will be back to normal within six months or a year, hopefully.

And that doesn't happen, you know, in this litigious age that we're in, potentially they could be sued because you told me that I would be better and I'm not now, so what are you going to do about it?

So they tend to be very, very pessimistic.

Now the downside, and in fact I was talking to somebody today who was told that their back pain would not get better and they would not be able to walk and they would not be able to dance and they would not be able to do lots of things.

But luckily they were one of those people that said stuff you was not the word, was not the word that they use, but they said, I don't believe you and I am bloody minded enough to prove you wrong.

As in they are, they are pretty much back to normal.

Correct.

You know, little, little bit of, little bit of numbness in the lake, but other than that they're absolutely fine.

And this is, this is one of the things about the medical profession is there's very few absolutes, there's very few that will never, you will never be able to do that again.

Sometimes, yes, that will be the case.

But a lot of the time if you give people hope and you Give them the support that they need, then you can get improvements.

So rather so for me, rather than tell somebody you'll never be able to do that again, I always go, well, okay, let's see where you are.

These are things we can do.

Let's see how far we can get.

We.

As opposed to that ultimate.

Nope, sorry, you never do that again.

So this kind of leads me onto.

Now you've explained what the sages of grief are, this kind of leads me onto a case study of a very good friend of mine who was super fit in the army.

He was able to run up and down Snowden with a weighted bag on his back and all the rest of it.

And he loved his life in the army.

He had a couple of injuries, so he had some issues with the discs in his neck, he had some issues with the disc in his low back and he left the army.

Unfortunately, the support wasn't great.

So he then developed fibromyalgia and PTSD and he went through those stages of grief.

And I know, I've already spoken to him, so I know he won't mind me mentioning his name.

His name's Nick Wilson.

He is a disabled adventurer.

I've been working with him and we've become close friends over the last four years.

Now, Nick is a bit of a charmer, so he's been in a power chair for the last three years because he's bloody minded enough what he.

So he went through those stages of grief, as you mentioned, and then he.

I'm sure he won't mind saying that he attempted to take his own life, he wished because he developed depression and life was not great.

But he survived.

He used to run men's groups talking to men about depression and how they could start to support themselves.

And from that he then he likes to have these ambitious schemes.

So I'm not sure where he got the idea from, but he approached a company just down the road from this is being filled in Northampton.

Toaster's just down the road from us.

He went to this engineering company and said, I want to take a power chair at Snowden.

Can you build one for me?

And they said, yeah, of course we can.

So they did.

It took something like two years to go from prototype to actually building an electric power chair that was capable of going up Snowden.

It's a work of art, independent suspension, independent motors, the whole bit.

So just over a year ago he.

I was part of the team that was supporting him while you're doing it, he took power chair of Snowden.

He's the first person in the world to ever actually do.

To climb Mount Snowden or Earwydfa unsupported.

It's been done before, but with massive teams of people, ropes and pulleys and everything else to get that person up there.

He just had the power chair.

We were there to help him not fall off the side of the mountain because there was a couple of moments where it was touching guy.

It took three attempts, but he made it.

And what happened was one of the members of the team is a videographer, Benjamin Kelly.

And I'll put all this in the show notes.

So he made a one hour documentary on the journey from.

And he will say himself that he was depressed and had nothing to live for.

And the thing that helped him to survive and pull through all of that is the fact that he had this project, you know, so he'd gone through the stages of grief and then he got to a point where he thought, this is what I'm going to do.

And because the project took a while and because he was very, very heavily involved in the project as well, it was designed around him.

It helped, yeah, it gave him.

It gave him purpose.

Ikigai, which is what we've talked about before, it gave him purpose.

And he took.

Not only did he tape a power chair up to the top of Ear Wydfa, he now has a number of other projects on the go, which I know one of them, but I'm not allowed to announce it yet because that's going to come in a couple of weeks.

But he went from being someone who had left the army, felt hopeless, did not have an idea about what he wanted to do or where he was going to go with that.

Not only did he go up Mount Snowden, but he also became the disabled adventurer, which is what he called himself.

And he is also a champion for accessibility.

And he is in negotiations with teams that make.

With companies that make power chairs.

He's looking at getting the batteries and the power changed and he wants anyone with a disability to be able to do what he's done.

Not necessarily go to Mount Snowden.

That's just a strange kind of thing that the next soldier would do.

But to be able to just to be able to have a power chair that can go up a pavement without having to look for a drop curve.

Simple things to us, but to people who have a chair and they have to, they have to maneuver our world every day, there are so many barriers to that.

And Nick is not, like I said, not just the disabled adventurer, but he's also champion accessibility and he's done a lot of great things.

He's going to do a lot more great things.

And what I'll do is I'll put a link to the documentary in the show notes and I'll put some stuff about his socials in there.

Because if you, if you want to see what life is like for someone with a disability and who's in a power chair, he's a man to watch.

He's a man to look at and learn from.

And if you want to see how you can take something that we'd be talking about permanent disability and how you can turn that into the energy which will get you up to the top of Snowden, then, yeah, Nick's documentary, Nick's story is an inspiring story.

There is so much more to say about this, but we're on the time, so.

Yes, grief, physical disability, mental health, disability can all affect grief.

And it's not having the grief, it's how you deal with that.

You will almost certainly go through the stages that Players talks about, but as long as you've got the support, you can get through it.

And like Nick, you can turn your life around and you can be someone who can make changes for others and open those doors.

So.

So, yeah, that's.

I think it's one of the four that's.

I think the important thing to know is that grief, it's a natural process.

We might not go through all of the stages, but it is a natural process and it's.

It just takes time.

But that is so inspiring.

Yeah, he is.

He's a great.

He's a great guy.

We're good friends.

So.

So just to add to that, yes, we will go through those stages, but again, it's one of the things we say and a lot of our podcasts help with support.

Are there, you know, there is so much support for people going through that grooming process for whatever reason that you're going through it.

Help.

Help is this.

Reach out, talk to someone.

That's all.

That's always a key.

Talk to someone, try and find that support.

And if we can help, just let us know.

You know, like I said, leave some information, drop some information in the comments, we'll get back to you and we'll hopefully be able to signpost it to someone that can give you some support that you need.

And I think that's it for this one.

Anything else to add to that, Chloe?

No, but that's really top note to end up.

Yeah.

Well, then, Nick, see you soon, mate.

Yeah, so that's the end of the podcast, and we will see you at the next one.

Bye for now.