Steve Pape's story

It was meant to be a short motorbiking holiday in Scotland with friends. It was also the first time Carol and I had been apart since our wedding in February 2000. The morning of 14 July 2000 was like any other morning and after two great days of biking I was looking forward to the ride home to Leeds. As it turned out I didn’t leave Scotland for another six weeks.

That morning, all I can remember is sitting down for breakfast and passing some time talking to a couple of other bikers. After pulling out of the hotel’s car park, I have no recollection of what happened next. From what people have told me, and from what the police crash investigators have deduced from the scene of the accident, I was apparently going around a left hand bend at speed. I must have lost control of my motorbike and collided with the walls on either side of the road seven miles out from the hotel. The scene was apparently like the aftermath of a bomb blast.

I was taken to the nearest hospital specialising in neurological injuries - Ninewells Hospital in Dundee. I was immediately placed on a ventilator because I wasn’t breathing on my own, even though my heart was going okay. My lungs had also collapsed so I had two chest drains inserted to keep them inflated. Once I was safe to move, (with drips, catheters, chest drains and loads of monitors attached), I was taken for a CT scan of my brain to assess the damage, as my helmet was proof that I had suffered a head injury. Although there was no bleeding, my brain had been damaged due to the acceleration/de-acceleration forces of the accident. It was all very touch and go as to whether I would live or not so I was taken to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).

For several weeks, my condition was very unstable and nobody could tell Carol if I would survive. How she coped with it all I don’t know.

In my mind, all this happened to someone else, even though I’ve seen the photos that the ICU nurses recommended were taken to make me realise how ill I was. My time in the ICU was an eventful one, as my condition would change from minute to minute; I was that unstable. However, as the weeks passed I started to improve and I slowly started to come out of the coma I had been in for about a month.

I was finally fit for the transfer to Leeds after about six weeks in Scotland. The neurological ward at Leeds General Infirmary was my home for the next two weeks. I became a little more aware of my surroundings here and the reality of having a head injury really began to sink in. I became very frustrated that I could no longer feed myself, walk or even talk properly and my tolerance of other people was not good.

A full recovery was always my main goal so when I was transferred to the rehabilitation unit at Chapel Allerton hospital two weeks later, Carol and I worked hard at the exercises given to us by the physiotherapists, occupational therapists and speech therapists. The aim of rehab seemed to be to get you back to functioning as independently as possible. The coma had taken me back to zero so I had to relearn pretty much everything. Luckily, I had a strong sense of the person I was before the crash so I made it my mission to be that person again.

After only a month in rehab, I was able to walk on my own and do simple tasks such as make a sandwich – you’d be amazed at how much organisational skill is needed just to do that! My speech was also improving although my tone of voice still wasn’t quite right but I was desperate to go home so I was discharged although we continued to attend the various therapy sessions on an outpatient basis.

There tends to be a misconception that life after a brain injury is all doom and gloom. I must admit that the first year after the accident was really difficult although we received a lot of support from the various therapists at the rehab unit and from Headway, the organisation supporting brain injury sufferers and their families. I also wrote Stepped Off - a book about my journey back to health, accompanied with a website. The aim is to help others going through a similar experience, although no two accidents and no two brain injuries are the same.