The view from the mountain top

By Tracy Hearn

This is me a few months ago. I could stand up without difficulty, move about easily and go wherever I liked by public transport. In the past I enjoyed fell walking and skiing and this is me at the beginning of this year, in a wheelchair, stuck. On the 2^nd of December 2012 I slipped on black ice while crossing a bridge near Durham station. I suddenly felt an intense pain go through my body and heard my bones go scrunch. A man came running out of a near by church when he heard my screams and called an ambulance. At Durham A&E they found I had dislocated my ankle and broken it in three different places. I have been in a lot of pain for the past few months and at times my mobility was non-existent. I have felt frustrated and depressed some of the time wishing I could be pain free and mobile. I recently started looking at various pictorial records of bike around the Ouseburn, I came across a series of pictures of an old lady with a walking stick putting her rubbish out apparently with a certain amount of difficulty. In the past I wouldn’t have given this much thought but somehow my recent experience of being physically disabled made me feel an instant empathy for her. I can relate to her having to think about every single movement in order to complete such a mundane task. This has made me think about my own situation differently, I am still young enough to bounce back from the effects of my accident; I am already on crutches rather than in a wheel chair all the time. I have taken up some new hobbies: book making and printing and digital storytelling. These new activities have brought a sense of enjoyment in my life and I am looking forward to developing them further, there is a lot to look forward to.