Claire Lomas is a one-woman whirlwind, and her story is not altogether typical of what happens after spinal cord injury. The book may not be the best written (or edited) of all the accounts reviewed on this website, but it is one of the most authentic. Claire gives us her unadulterated story as she sees it, with no worries about using non-PC language, or squeamishness about bladder and bowel incidents, and no holding back in her criticisms of clinicians encountered along her journey. (I use her comments about the one-size-fits-all approach at the spinal injury unit she attended for discussions about person-centred practice.) And for the most part she is unbelievably positive.
Briefly, she had a riding injury in 2007, resulting in a high thoracic (T4) paraplegia. After an early self-discharge from a dissatisfying experience with NHS rehab, she explores several options for further treatment and rehabilitation, as well as conventional out-patient physiotherapy. She is definitely someone who takes responsibility for her future. She goes to America to try out Project Walk. She tries out riding at 4 months post-accident, still lacking good sitting balance. She finds a maverick therapist in a London Clinic to drive her harder. She breaks up with her pre-accident boyfriend and meets someone else. They fly to Kenya and go on a safari. She organises Fund-raising calendars and fashion events to fund her rehab. She follows up a recommendation about stationary cycling using Functional Electrical Stimulation. She finds a new sport, monoskiing, which provides fun but also drives further improvement in her trunk control. She gets married to Dan and gives birth to daughter Maisie. And, famously, she completes the 2012 London Marathon in 17 days, using a ReWalk exoskeleton and crutches, raising £100,000 for Spinal Research in the process. At times it is hard to follow the chronology – 2010 and 2011 seem to merge – but it is still a pretty good catalogue for five years. And that is without the hand-cycling challenge which is the fund-raising achievement for 2013.
This book provides an excellent insight into the practical problems after a Spinal Cord Injury that need to be overcome to enable life to continue successfully. Claire Lomas is undoubtedly fortunate in the network of well-heeled or well-known friends, family and contacts that contribute to her rehabilitation and her fund-raising adventures. But she also makes her own luck, and takes the initiative. She is always telling about the research she has done and the experimental prospecting e-mails she has sent. The phrase ‘Life is what you make it’ had to appear somewhere, and it does (p99). But it rings true where Claire Lomas is concerned.
There are descriptions of encounters with autonomic dysreflexia, disruption of temperature regulation and other symptoms, her on-going bladder and bowel management strategies, the effects of her injury on her pregnancy, and the relative benefits of the different treatments she tries. Early after discharge from hospital she has a harness fixed up in a garage to enable her to ‘walk’ on a treadmill with assistance. Computerised Functional Electrical Stimulation cycling (using 16 electrodes on different muscles) is undoubtedly successful in maintaining her leg muscle bulk – so when she is training hard for the hand-cycling challenge or for the exoskeleton events, her opportunities to use the FES disappear, and so do the lower limb muscles. The monoskiing appears very helpful in sparking improvements in abdominal tone and posture. The difficulties of using the ReWalk exoskeleton are vividly described – how do you transfer your weight from one leg to the other when you cannot feel those legs, and certainly not the changes in pressure under the feet? [As I write (2017) Claire has just completed The [10 mile] Great South Run in under 24 hours using the same exoskeleton technology.]
A shortened version of the book is the interview for the Nicholls Spinal Injury Foundation, which gives a great impression of Claire as a person, but also the magnitude of the initial injury and of the changes it made to her life. (The interview also has a specific aim to promote the charity, so her book is undoubtedly a better picture of the process of her life since the injury.)
Depressive spells are briefly dismissed in short paragraphs that concentrate on the help that friends provided when she was down, but there is enough here for readers with spinal cord injury to realise that the journey was not always as straight-forward as it first appears. Claire also talks about the dark times in the nsif interview. But her overall message is that she took charge of her rehab, and made her own future. And that is a very strong and inspiring message for others.
Claire Lomas (2014) Finding My Feet, Melton Mowbray, Claire Lomas Books
Interview (10.22) with Claire Lomas for the Nicholls Spinal Injury Foundation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaeOfQP_MxE
A pre-2012 London Marathon ITV interview gives a good sense of the difficulties of using the ReWalk suit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4NkFXcYSGQ
Brief video of Claire in the ReWalk exoskeleton completing the 2012 London Marathon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzWpywnU_5k produced by the promoters of the ReWalk suit (Cyclone Mobility).
A wonderful book, describing how much power and will a person can have, to keep going and never give up , no matter how difficult the health problem is !
I totally recommend it for any other readers, who are interested to see the insight from a patient with spinal cord injury and the whole surgical and physiotherapy procedures through which she has been.
It depicts her personal story before the accident, the moment of the accident and all her struggle after to strive for a better self, fighting to recover, managing to live a happy life, getting married, and empowering every other person with spinal cord injury to ‘don’t give up and keep going forward’!
As I mentioned before, there are chapters also that describe the physiotherapy procedures and medical treatments and complications.