An Edinburgh man was left paralysed after a near fatal fall while packing for a dream trip with his girlfriend.
Emma Hay, 39 and her partner Iain, 49, were living in their top-floor Bruntsfield flat when they decided to take a sabbatical in the south of France in 2016.
Able to run his own business from abroad, Iain would support the couple while Emma took leave from Heriot’s Junior School.
READ MORE - Edinburgh man paralysed after fall while packing for dream trip with girlfriend
However, just days away from their move to the sun, the couple’s lives were drastically altered after Iain took a fall from their attic.
Speaking to Edinburgh Live, Emma said they still don’t know if Iain fainted or tripped, but while tidying the loft, he fell through the hatch on July 7, 2016, and down to the floor below.
Only discovering Iain when she returned home hours later, the couple were blue-lighted to the Edinburgh's Western General Hospital, and then onto a special spinal unit in Glasgow where Iain would spend the next eight months.
Describing that day, Emma said: “We had decided to take the sabbatical and live in France for a year, we were getting packed up to do a house sit for friends and then just seven days before we were due to fly Iain was up in the loft sorting out space for our things.
“He either fainted or tripped, and he fell head first through the loft hatch and landed on the floor of the box room below.
“He lay there for four hours before I got home, and then all of a sudden you’re in the system, getting ambulances all over the place.
“By the September they’d realised no movement was really going to come back so he was moved to the rehabilitation ward and from then on it was getting him used to his paralysis from the neck down. It was one of the highest injuries they’d ever seen anyone survive from.
“On the first night my cousin lived in Glasgow and I didn’t know it well so after the accident I went there and I’d been awake about 24 or 36 hours, I just look back and I think I was just a rabbit in headlights."
Left quadriplegic from the accident, Emma shared there is “no guidebook” on how to move forward, with the couple facing huge changes to their life.
Feeling as if there was minimal support for her on how to help Iain and navigate their new life, she hopes to see that change for others in the future.
She said:“I couldn’t be seen and I just felt invisible in that hospital.
“It just devastated both of our lives, and what I was told really early on was that Iain was getting all of the best care and technology, the doctors and nurses are amazing, but I didn’t get that. You suddenly have to know things about your work, selling a top floor flat you can’t live in anymore, and all the practicalities.
“I was 34 thinking about, am I going to be a mum, am I going to have my marriage and the life that I envisaged?
“Since then everything i’m able to do I’m so much more grateful for, Iain loved swimming and I remember going swimming within a month of the accident and sobbing thinking ‘he doesn’t get to do this but I do, but now I think of it as an honour to do these things."
Due to the pressure of their relationship, Emma and Iain have separated since the accident, but have “remained close.”
Moving to Elgin two years ago, Emma is now raising funds for the Highland Hospice, to help with the “incredible” work they do as well as the support they provide to patients and their families.
Still an important part of each other’s lives, Emma shared that Iain has “donated to all of her fundraisers” and still has an “incredibly positive outlook on life.”
She said: “The accident was really confronting and could have destroyed me, so when I looked around and saw all these other people like me that were sort of ‘the people standing beside’ it helped, and when I saw the hospice fundraiser I thought yes I want to help, they’re an amazing charity and they need £7,000 a day to run the hospice.
"When Iain was in hospital I got involved with a charity called Horatio’s Garden which have put gardens in all of these spinal units around the UK, and looking back that place definitely saved me.
“It was a place for me to go when it was hard and I didn’t really know Iain anymore, his body was becoming this alien place that did weird things and I couldn’t read it anymore, I couldn’t even get a hug. So finding this garden was amazing."
As well as raising funds through gifts and crafts, Emma will also be taking part in Strictly Inverness, a charity ballroom competition, to help with her efforts.
Training three times a week to perform in front of over 600 people, Emma will take on the huge challenge to celebrate her 40th birthday.
Emma continued: “A girl I knew worked on it and we got speaking about it, learning to dance has been amazing and Iain loved to dance.
“Dancing was part of who we were and then when I saw it last year I thought that’s what I need to do, I’m turning 40 in April, it’s a lot of training but it’s been amazing.
“It’s the people that care for the people at the hospice that are at the front of my mind, it’s these groups that you can find a sense of belonging when your whole world drops on its axis.
“Because we lived in a top floor flat Iain had to move to his parents originally in Perthshire and I would come and visit, but he ended up needing a live-in carer as I couldn't do it.
“We’re still friends and he texts me everyday, he’s donated for Strictly Inverness and helping where he can.
“His way of seeing the world now is really different, Iain is still hopeful, he does research everyday.
“If you look to the person sitting beside and make sure their needs are met it makes a huge difference as then they can help the person whose lying there, whatever that looks like."
You can find and donate to Emma’s fundraiser here.
