Greg Whorwood's Homepage
Head Injury Survivor - Greg!!!

On 15^th May 1994 I suffered a severe head injury in a BMX freestyle competition in Northampton, England, even though I was wearing a crash helmet. I was sixth in the country in my class at BMX freestyle and a member of the British Freestyle Association. I was in my final year at my secondary school, Salvatorian College in Harrow, and getting A's and B's in most subjects. I was a normal healthy and intelligent 15 year old. I was taken to the Northampton General Hospital on Glasgow Coma Scale 7 and then to the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, a centre of excellence, where my pupils became fixed and dilated at 1.00 am on Monday morning. I had emergency surgery to remove 80% of the blood clot but remained in Intensive Care for nearly four weeks. There were three unsuccessful attempts to wean me off the ventilator but the fourth attempt worked due to the expertise of a wonderful New Zealand nurse called Nicky. Four weeks later the part of my skull which had been removed and kept on ice was replaced and successfully fused to the rest of my skull. I was sent back to my local hospital but remained in a deep coma for three months during which time I got Stevens Johnston syndrome due to incorrect medication and again nearly died. At my parents' insistence I was transferred to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, another centre of excellence, where they stabilised me and my coma started to "lighten". I gradually came out of deep coma three months after the accident but was semi conscious for another six months or so back in the local hospital where they once again gave me the wrong medication. I was on lots of drugs and very drowsy, fed by gastrostomy tube into my stomach, incontinent and could not move. At the Regional Rehab Unit in Northwick Park Hospital they discovered I could still read and understand quite a lot so I made "modest progress" and they were able to arrange for me to go to Chailey Heritage near Brighton, England, yet another centre of excellence where, fifteen months after my accident my progress accelerated.

Whizz Kidz supplied me with a power wheelchair. A local man, Keith Tyler, ran the New York and Venice Marathons which raised £3,000 for this (helped by donations from my old school, Salvatorian College and St Dominics Sixth Form College - thanks Mr Wehrle and Mr Lipscomb!). Now Martin Cross with the Harrow Rotary Club has raised enough funds for me to have a new chair which will allow me to get out and about more. It goes up kerbs! I am deeply grateful to Martin and his fellow Rotarians.

I was at Banstead Place in Surrey and then The National Star Centre at Cheltenham in their Head Injury Unit on the campus but they were a new brain injury unit and relatively inexperienced so I left there to join a ground breaking programme -Advance - devised by scientists at Moscow University. Their approach is entirely predictable and I am progressing intellectually and physically. The more able I am then the more I can gain from studies in my local area.

 Keep on pumping the pump and the water eventually...... comes out of the well!

Here is a picture of my sister Joanna, her husband Dan at their wedding in July 1999:

"Oh, Such a Perfect Day"¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯

This picture was taken about two years after my accident. It shows my twin brother Jonathan, my sister Joanna and me. I was still very thin and weak but improving all the time. The tube had been removed from my stomach, I had become continent and was off all medication!

 My twin brother Jonathan and I met LOUISE at the BBC, where we went into the studio with her whilst she filmed Electric Circus - she is lovely! This was arranged for me by Dreams Come True and it truly was my dream come true...............

The TBI Chat Room & Homepage

 You can e-mail me at greg.whorwood@lineone.net

FastCounter by LinkExchange