Chris Williams - Spinal Rehabilitation

Chris Williams – Spinal Cord Injury – Rehabilitation

As some of you are aware on Sunday the 7th May Chris had a devastating accident on his mountain bike. Unfortunately he has damaged his spinal cord at C6/C7 in his neck, this initially means he has limited hand movement and is paralysed from the chest down.

As you can imagine, for Chris and his loving family this is life changing.

He was rushed to the Walton by air ambulance after a gruelling rescue by Mountain Rescue and Air Ambulance, has had an 8 hour surgery to stabilise his neck and has been in intensive care (in here he also had to recover from a nasty chest infection and was nearly ventilated). He has started slow recovery, is currently resting and doing low level physio. Already he has shown us as a family how strong and determined he is.

https://www.leaderlive.co.uk/news/23507395.mountain-biker-transferred-hospital-following-incident-st-asaph/

Chris is an amazing man, the most caring man, who is a devoted father to two young girls (9 weeks and 20 month). His family do genuinely mean the world to him. He is very protective over his family so not being with them is torture. However, this is one of the main reasons he is so determined to recover the best he can.

Chris has many friends and plays in a band, 50 Hertz. He works hard and has an active lifestyle. He loves being outdoors, with his family, out on the bike and walking the dog. He is desperate for this to be in his life again.

Unfortunately we are told that all spinal injuries are very different and the road of recovery will be uncertain. What we do know is that it is going to be a long one and unfortunately will be quite expensive.

Recovery can take up to 2 years. He will be going to a specialised NHS spinal unit, but we know the NHS is very stretched so this wont be a long term option. Chris wants every possible option to get himself better. This will involve specialised intense rehabilitation (about £8000 every six weeks) possible specialised wheelchairs(each up to £5000) and possible home adaptations (around £40,000).

The cost is a lot. Although Chris is keen to work in the future, we have to maintain a family life with two babies, pay the mortgage and finance the travel to Liverpool.

This is essentially why we have set up this Go Fund me page, to give him the opportunity to make the best recovery he can with specialised physio. But to also offer him this opportunity to make a successful recovery without worrying about his family and to enable him to spend his rehabilitation in a family home.

Chris would also like to say thank you for the messages of support and that all money not used will be donated to Mountain Rescue and Air Ambulance.

From his loving family, Catrin (wife) Tony (dad) Sue (mum) and Rachel (sister) xxx