My Journey To Walking Again

Getting Back on My Feet

After all my efforts in the gym pre-injury, I used to flex in the mirror to appreciate the work that I had done.

But if only I had known that the “appreciation” I was showing myself, was really my insecurities being reflected to me.

I say this because, after I jumped, I was laying in a hospital bed, wearing casts on both arms, boots on both feet and a neck brace with many tubes going all throughout my body with nothing to show for.

Not only did I hate my body even more with the muscles quickly fading away, but I was completely paralyzed from my abdomen down.

In a heartbeat, my life changed forever…

I was told recovery was “impossible” but deep down I wanted to go back to the muscular young guy I was.

Fuelled by my self-hatred, I religiously went to every physio session I could in the hopes of reversing my injuries.

However, after an apathetic number of months in the hospital, a glimmer of hope shined when I met another new patient not long before I left the place, “Dave”.

One day, I was downstairs at Royal North Shore Hospital (RNSH) with an assistant in nursing (AIN) supervising me. The AIN says hi and introduces the two of us.

Dave says, “Matt, nice to meet you, mate. they call me Freddy Krueger! As you can see, tore half my face off in a motorbike accident. I used to work in construction, but now I scare people!”

I never used to joke about my injury, but the way Dave would laugh at himself made me smile. Though, as much as he would take the piss out of himself, Dave worked extremely hard and progressed unlike anyone else I had seen.

After three months of knowing him, I was discharged from Royal Rehab and on my way home. The only difference between him and I was that he was up on his feet, walking with crutches independently and I went home in my wheelchair with a little bit of upper abdomen function having returned.

When I returned home, I began seeing a new physio, Lea who had originally studied overseas and had tremendous progress with some of her other clients that I met.

Despite my wanting to walk again as the main goal, she mentioned that the first thing we had to work on was my core stability and strength.

But look, while Dave and my Lea brought me a sense of hope, showing up to these sessions was the hardest thing to do.

What I wanted, and what reality showed me were two very different things. I was only doing rehab once every week or two at most, and it felt gruelling.

I wasn’t motivated. And I was frustrated with myself because I felt like I was going nowhere.

And going ‘nowhere’ felt like it was being reaffirmed to me as I had an appointment at the end of 2016 with a specialist who was sending some information to my GP. We spoke for half an hour, and one of the topics was my goals.

I shared that I was going to walk again. That I was doing rehab intermittently and wanted to progress things. They asked how long until then, and I said “two years”.

A week later, a letter addressed to my Mum was lying on the kitchen bench, opened.

I couldn’t help but notice that it was the report needing to be forwarded to my GP.

When I glanced over, I saw the “Goals” section of the letter. Written there was my goal of wanting to walk again with a note from the specialist.

“Matt is delusional in his way of thinking.”

As much as I laughed at this in front of my family, it actually upset me.

“Was this even possible?” “Am I kidding myself?” “Am I good enough for this?” Am I delusional? A professional says so.”

I continued with my rehab sessions every week or two and things remained stagnant.

However, at the end of 2018, I attended an event that left me with a completely different outlook on life.

A week before I flew to this event, Centrelink sent me a reminder to log how much I had earned from my presentations that fortnight. I submitted it while I was in the gym, but there was a Wi-Fi issue, so it didn’t go through. And a message appeared, “There has been an error logging your income. Please call us to figure this out.”

I wasn’t going to call Centrelink, only to be put on hold forever, so I put my phone away and forgot about it. The next week was the event, and the Saturday following, I received another message from Centrelink.

“Your payments have now been cancelled. Please call us to figure this out.”

Immediately I picked up the phone and called. “Who do they think they are? Those are my payments. I deserve them!”

But after 15 minutes of being on hold, Those thoughts started to make me feel sick to my stomach.

I couldn’t help but think, “What am I doing right now?” I was on hold, waiting to speak to Centrelink to get back my disability support pension.

I wasn’t doing anything wrong, but was being “disabled” something that I wanted? Did I want to be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of my life?

And not only that, but I aim to be an example of hope for others through my actions. Why would I want a safety net to fall on just in case things didn’t work out? Don’t I believe in myself, my mission and the goals I want to achieve?

I hung up the phone and never called them back.

The next time I drove to the shops though, I saw a card being held at the edge of my windscreen; my disabled parking permit.

I used to be embarrassed by it and usually hid it away. Only this time it was left there.

For the first time, I decided to park in a spot without the accessibility sign on it. And like the pension, I thought to myself, “If I’m up and walking, do I have a disabled parking permit?”

I snapped it up and never got another.

At the time I was a month away from a 3-week trip to Singapore, and I was low on cash. I owed my Dad some money from a course, and I was worried about how I was going to fund my trip while I was away.

Sure enough, my next speaking gig brought me more than six times the money I was getting before I chose to remove my ‘safety nets’, and more gigs suddenly came through. I paid off my Dad and had a great trip at the beginning of 2019. I took this as a message from God that I had made a good decision.

I bumped rehab up to three to four sessions every week, and things miraculously started improving! I had some significant progress in my legs with new muscles firing and things getting stronger.

Come 2020, a friend inspired me to bump rehab up to every day. She was blunt with me but I needed to hear it. So, I decided to go to physio once a week and have trainers come to me every morning when I wasn’t at physio.

Slowly slowly, things progressed. I began doing assisted sit-to-stands as well as jumping on the exercise bike in the gym regularly.

In late 2022, I returned to Royal Rehab to begin regular sessions with the latest technology, the new Ekso Skeleton which measures your inputs while walking.

This journey is a slow burn, but a very rewarding one. Waking up early to prepare for my sessions every day isn’t easy, but nor should it be.

If recovery from a complete spinal cord injury is deemed “impossible” by many medical professionals, then I shouldn’t expect a smooth ride. But my life has proved to me over and over again how much people can achieve if one aligns their mind, body and spirit with their efforts.

Thankfully, I learned mental strength, grit, discipline, hard work, self-belief and consistency with the physique I built before my injury.

The difference between then and now is that I’m directing those same strengths towards purposeful goals.

If that’s possible for me, what’s possible for you?

Follow my journey to walking again!