Never Broken (11 page)

Looking back, I just think I felt terrible because I knew she had my best interests at heart. I lashed out because I felt trapped in an awful situation that had no easy solution or cure and the strain and the stress of it was horrific.

The next day I rang my dad while he was at work knowing that my mum wasn’t there. I had an hour-long conversation with him and talked everything through calmly. The first thing I said was: ‘Dad, Mum’s so upset I need to speak to someone who can take the emotion out of this decision. I need to think and talk logically about it.’

The severity of the consequences of the amputation had now hit home and I was processing the negatives, not just the positives of what becoming an amputee actually meant in everyday life. Dad was brilliant. Together we talked through what I would do in old age, how I would go to the toilet, and actually what my life would become with only one leg. At this point I hadn’t spoken to any other amputees so I didn’t really have any points of reference on any of these types of questions.

While neither my dad nor I knew the answers it was brilliant to just have a sounding board to talk things through logically and calmly with. In my heart of hearts, though, my mind was fully made up. I knew the amputation was my one chance at changing my life and nothing was going to stop me. I’ve always been a very determined and focused person and when I get something in my sights, I make sure I go for it. It was the same with having my leg off. So while I could tell my dad didn’t really want me to have it done, he was totally accepting that this was the decision I had made and I was sticking with it.

There have been certain times in my life when I’ve made decisions that others may have thought were wrong, or they didn’t understand them, but 99 per cent of the time I’ve been right and I knew this was right for me. My gut, my head and my heart were all working as one: I was getting my leg amputated and there would be no going back.

I made an appointment to go and see my GP the next day. They already had the letter from my consultant in Birmingham to say that we’d discussed amputation as a possibility. When I sat down with the GP to discuss the mechanics of it, though, it was an absolutely surreal experience. It was bizarre to talk to her about phantom limb pain and the risk that I could have
my leg off and none of the pain would go. This was a real fear and the first time anyone had actually mentioned it. The thought that I would go through such a big operation and still have the agony but my leg would not be there was terrifying. To have an operation like that with all the other risks attached to it and be back to square one again was almost too much to bear but although this was a very real risk, I was prepared to take a chance for my life to become better.

It was then that she said: ‘We had better send you to Headley Court for a look round.’ She also said she was going to request that if there were any other female soldiers in there, perhaps I could speak to them. I was delighted at the thought of speaking with another female as I had lots of questions only they’d be able to answer. My main one was: ‘Would I be able to wear high heels again?’

At that time I’d not worn, never mind bought, a pair of shoes for three years. I had a space boot that I wore now and again when I wasn’t in my wheelchair. I could sort of hobble around with it but it looked so awful and it was so painful that I used to take it off and just go without. Baggy, long clothes did the trick of covering my feet and I’d go barefoot in my wheelchair. I felt I couldn’t show my legs as I was only able to shave one leg and then I could just go down to mid-shin on my bad leg as my foot was so deformed and in so much agony. I felt disgusting as I’d always taken so much pride in my appearance and now I couldn’t.

Then there was the issue of my weight. Even if I’d been able to move around on my foot I would have struggled as I was getting out of breath even walking a few yards because I was so big. I was just trapped. I didn’t feel I was a good person to be around, so I preferred to stay in on my own. My confidence
was so low that I convinced myself people wouldn’t like me and would want to stay away anyway. It was a vicious circle. I was making no progress whatsoever with my rehabilitation and days turned into weeks, turned into months and into years. In a cycle of doom and despair, I couldn’t see anything positive at all in my life: it was just black. That’s why as soon as amputation was mentioned my brain snapped out of the fog of the past three years and I thought: ‘I can have my heels again, I can lose the weight and maybe even go back to work again.’ For the first time since the accident I could see a glimmer of hope and a very real possibility I might have a future. The amputation gave me something positive to focus on.

So when I went back to see my consultant, Professor Porter, the following week at Birmingham hospital, my head was buzzing with positive thoughts for the future. I felt invigorated that I might be able to take control of my life once more and that I might actually be able to have a life again that wasn’t one where I spent nearly 24/7 in a wheelchair at home.

By this time I’d been under Professor Porter for three years so I knew him well enough to discuss the amputation with him further. While he was at pains to stress it was not a cure-all, he said it could potentially make a difference to my life. Feeling invigorated by everything, I went back and talked with Jamie again but within forty-eight hours I was back with my GP, telling her that I wanted to go for it as soon as possible.

As part of the amputation process you must be seen by a clinical psychologist to check you are of sound mind and able to make a clear decision about having your leg amputated. A few days later, I had my appointment with her in Northern Ireland and I was champing at the bit, raring to go with everything. An impatient person at the best of times, when my mind’s made
up I just want to get moving with stuff. At the appointment I was a bag of nerves as I knew I was under pressure to answer her questions correctly. I felt like I was putting on a character and trying to second-guess all the things she was asking me so she would grant me the amputation. It was as if she was playing mind games with me. Of course she wasn’t, she was simply doing her job, but I was so desperate to give her what I thought were the answers that she wanted to hear. I felt relief that it was over after our one-hour consultation. Shaking her hand goodbye, I just hoped that I’d done enough.

I had to wait nearly a week to see Professor Porter in Birmingham and during that time I felt sick with nerves. I could barely sleep and all I kept thinking about was the fact that this one woman stood between me and my hope of getting my life back. When I arrived for my appointment with Professor Porter I could barely get my words out and when he told me that I hadn’t passed the psychological evaluation I was devastated. Any hope of starting my life again was over before it had begun. The psychologist had told him she didn’t feel I was mentally ready to make the decision to have my leg off so had advised I shouldn’t have it done. It was like the bottom was falling out of my world again. I’d come this far only for red tape and bureaucracy to stop me.

I could barely register his words when he then told me everything was going to be all right because while you have to have the opinion of a clinical psychologist, they do not make the final decision. He gently told me that he believed it was in my best interests to have my leg removed. And he got another doctor in as you need two consultants to override the clinical psychologist and he agreed with Professor Porter. At this I started to weep with relief. I was shaking because I
couldn’t believe that finally I would hopefully be free of my pain. I think because he’d been involved in my case for three years, Professor Porter had got to know me well enough to know that it was right for me. I’d tried every possible avenue to save my leg – it was something I’d so desperately wanted at the start – but it was time to move on – and that meant chopping off a leg that now only caused me pain. After all those years he was most certainly far more qualified to make the decision about my amputation than a woman I had met once for a psychological evaluation, who didn’t know me and didn’t know my case. I’m glad I didn’t know at the evaluation she was going to say no as I don’t know if I’d have been able to cope, but when Professor Porter gave it the green light I could have burst with joy.

I was then given a surgery date, there and then, and I left the hospital elated. I could barely tell Jamie as I was so emotional and relieved that this was going to happen. He just hugged me tight and told me I was doing the right thing and that he loved me and would always be there for me. I then counted down the days to the operation, which was less than three weeks away. It felt so weird to go home that night, almost a surreal anticlimax as if I could have had it done right away, I would have. Instead I had to go home and carry on life as normal despite being told I was about to have my leg chopped off!

It was so strange, I had a group of old girlfriends who came to visit me the weekend before my operation. I hadn’t seen them in months as I’d just shut myself away, but I hosted a party to say goodbye to my left leg. It was the first time in so long I could have a laugh and start to feel my life was changing. I got a bit of the old Hannah back that night – it felt like the first time I’d laughed for years.

The three weeks went by in a blur and even now I didn’t know what I really did. I was just so excited about having my leg off, which sounds crazy but I knew this would open the door to my future. I’ve got an app called Time Hop and it pulls up all your Facebook statuses from years ago, and now when I use it to look back at that time it makes me laugh as all my posts were ‘Goodbye tart on two legs hello one legged wonder’! Even now it shocks me how upbeat I was about losing my limb, but I knew I had a future to look towards, instead of fear.

I
n my heart and mind I was totally convinced that losing my leg would enable me to get my life back, so one of the most important meetings I have ever had was to happen just a week before my amputation. My surgeon, Professor Porter, as well as my military GP, whose name I sadly can’t remember, was keen to find a female soldier who I could talk to about having an amputation so I would have someone with whom I could identify more than the lads. One name that kept coming up was Captain Kate Philp.

I’d never met Kate before but I knew she was, at that time, the only other serving female soldier to lose a limb in a war zone. She was only in her early thirties when she had to have her left leg amputated below the knee after the Warrior tank she was commanding ran over a hidden 50kg bomb in Afghanistan. I wanted to meet her as while I knew medically what would happen to me after my leg was removed, I wanted
to ask more girly questions like: ‘How do you wear heels?’ and ‘How do you go to the loo in the middle of the night?’ All the important stuff that may seem trivial at face value but makes a massive difference in life.

Jamie and I were really lucky, as on the first day I went in for a tour of Headley Court, Captain Philp was in there as well, having a routine appointment. One of the nurses must have told her I was there because I got a message that she was up in the brew room, which is what we call the canteen, having a tea and that I should go up and join her.

The minute I sat down beside her it was like I’d known her for ages. Straight away, I started asking her all the questions I had. She laughed when I asked her about going to the loo and said: ‘It’s not a problem, you just hop or put your leg on!’ I then bombarded her with questions, including ‘Was she able to do sport?’ and ‘How did she feel as a woman with only one leg?’ Kate was just so upbeat and positive about everything, it gave me enormous peace of mind in what I was about to do. She was different from me, in the fact she hadn’t had a choice about her amputation as her leg was so terribly damaged after the blast that changed her life. She had had to have a positive outlook from day one as that was the card Fate had dealt her. While she made no bones about it not always being plain sailing, she reassured me I’d be fine.

Jamie asked her how she managed at home and did she have to take her leg off much. Another question was did she wear her leg all day, as I didn’t have a clue if you were able to or if that would be too painful. It was a relief to hear she put it on in the morning and took it off at night and just went about her daily business. One of the burning questions I had, and I knew only a woman could understand this, was:
‘What happens when you shave your leg?’ It turned out that as you don’t have a foot if you’ve had your leg amputated, you don’t shave in a straight line from the ankle – you have to shave the whole circumference of your leg where the limb has been removed. She also told me a lot about the potential skin infections I could get from shaving. Women can get lumps and bumps anyway from shaving through ingrown hairs, but imagine wrapping that hair in a lump of airless silicone and you get the drift of how bad it could be. It didn’t put me off, though – there was no way I was going to have hairy legs on top of everything else! Her overriding message was: ‘Well, I’ve only got one leg now so I’ll just have to get on with it’. She was living her life and what I took from the meeting was confirmation I’d be able to get on with mine again.

I was exceptionally at ease with what was about to happen as the amputation, although necessary, was being done after I’d had a chance to grieve for my leg. For three agonising years I’d suffered hell, so it was a relief to be breaking free from it. For that, I feel very fortunate for it was a fresh start, not a terrible, devastating shock.

The closer it got to the amputation day, the calmer I seemed to get about what was a massive, life-changing procedure. I’d had so many different operations at that point I almost felt my body was invincible, and I’d become fairly complacent about having surgery because I was so used to it. The fact that I was grossly overweight and that this could hamper both the surgery and its effects didn’t really come into my head.

The most important thing I did in those short weeks leading up to the surgery was to tell Milly that Mummy was going to have her leg removed. I hadn’t a clue where to start so one evening I went on my laptop and googled ‘How do you tell a
child you are having an amputation’ and it came as a surprise to me that there wasn’t actually anything at that time in any of the search engines. ‘How the hell am I going to tell her?’ I wondered. Jamie and I sat down, discussed it and decided I would get some pictures of women wearing prosthetic legs that I could print off from the Internet. I wanted them to be as positive as possible so I made sure that I got a few of female athletes wearing blades and women wearing a prosthetic with a high heel. It was important to me that I show her positive things so I could tell her that Mum was going to be like these women and have my bad leg taken off and a brilliant new leg put on.

She was five by then, so I took the time to explain it all to her and she just sat there, not uttering a word and taking it all in. She’d grown up with a mum who was severely disabled and in all honesty, our relationship was very badly damaged because of this as I’d become an absentee mother who was living in the same house as her. Even now, looking back, I can barely admit to myself that there wasn’t much of a bond between us at that point in my life due to what had happened to me. I’d been away and out of her life more than I’d been with her as I was away in Iraq and then in and out of hospital. I think it was hard for Milly to comprehend properly what was going on in as she was just so used to me not being there, so I think she just thought of my amputation as ‘Mummy’s going to hospital again’. Back then I felt so distant from her, which is a horrific thing to feel about your own child. Now, even all these years later, I feel great sadness if I think back to that time and our relationship. I just felt so cheated. I’d missed out on so much of her childhood due to my injury.

So when I told her, for the first time since the blast that I actually felt hopeful and having my leg off would mean I was
going to get better, I inwardly hoped that would mean our relationship as much as my leg. I just hugged her tight and a tear rolled down my cheek as I whispered to her, ‘I love you and I’m going to be a better mum to you now.’ I knew I’d be able to do more with her and actually give her a childhood that included me. It breaks my heart even now to think that I was so injured it had got to that and I doubted myself as a mother. Telling her that night was one of the biggest moments of my life as it meant I was finally going to get to know her and do the things ‘normal’ mums did. I wanted to make her proud of me and I was determined that the amputation and my life moving forward was going to transform everything for us both. She just hugged me back and smiled and that meant more to me than anything else in the world. It confirmed once again (though I didn’t need reminding) that the amputation was the right thing for me.

Despite that, moments of dread did start to creep in as the clocked ticked ever nearer to my op. I don’t know if it’s because telling Milly made the whole thing seem more real to me, but it seemed to activate a little voice in my head that said not only was this serious, it could be an operation that I didn’t come back from.

One evening, when Jamie was at work and Milly was safely tucked up in bed, I decided to do something I had only done once before and that was to write a letter that was to be opened up at my funeral if I didn’t pull through the operation. It was so different from the letter I’d written before I went to war. Back then I was a fresh-faced new mum with all my life in front of me. Now, just three years later, I knew how things could change in the blink of an eye and that no one is invincible and no one lives forever.

I was trembling when I got the pen and paper out and sat at the kitchen table but it was something I wanted and needed to get down in black and white. I started off by telling everyone how much I loved them, and that if I died I wanted Jamie to move on and find happiness with someone else. He was – and is – such a wonderful man he deserves to be happy in life. The only thing I asked was if another woman was in Milly’s life that she didn’t call her Mum because that’s the title I wanted to maintain. When I saw Milly’s name down on the sheet of paper that’s when the tears flowed. The thought that I might never see my little beautiful baby girl again was too much, but I knew I wasn’t being a proper mum to her so I had to go through with the amputation. I also wrote that they would always be financially looked after and that my parents must always have full access to Milly. Not that I felt this needed to be spelt out, but in my head I wanted to get my affairs in order so I knew if the worst was to happen I had left instructions about my final wishes. I don’t know what drove me to decide to write the letter but it ended up being two sides of A4 paper. I’ve still got it sealed in a safe place in my house and I’ve never opened it. It may be silly superstition but I feel like I never want to open it as if I do then I’m tempting fate and who knows what would happen?

I was so anxious as I wrote the letter, I clenched up inside. It was only once I’d got it all down and licked the envelope firmly shut that I felt I could breathe again. I’d been given a self-meditation and breathing cassette by the hospital to try and keep my anxiety under control, so to clear my head, I decided to put it on. You focus on bits of your body and tense them and relax them from your feet up while breathing deeply and calmly. I lay there alone in bed, listening to the
tape. When it got to the bit where it said ‘and now relax your left leg and your left foot’ I thought: ‘This is the last time I’m going to do this at home and this is the last time I’m going to have my leg here.’

Lying there alone in the dark with just the tape for company I got a strange sense of calm. This was it – I was saying goodbye to my leg for the final time. I count myself so lucky for moments like those as unlike some of the other guys at Headley Court, I didn’t wake up to my leg being missing. Instead I had time to say goodbye to it, as if it was a bereavement, but at the same time I felt I’d grieved enough and now it was time to say goodbye to it forever.

I was admitted to the hospital two days before my operation. Prior to being admitted I felt that Milly needed a holiday and a hospital was no place for a five-year-old, so Mum had agreed that she could stay with her in Cumbria. That allowed me to get some head space, with no distractions, to mentally prepare myself for the op. We agreed they’d all come down to see me post-op before taking her on holiday to Whitby and then placing her in our village primary school in Cumbria for a few months while I recuperated.

I’d barely slept a wink the night before my admission due to nervous excitement – I just wanted to crack on and have it done. Yet, at the same time, the reality of what I was doing had firmly sunk in. I don’t remember anything at all I said to Jamie on the way to the hospital. Putting my bag of clothes in the back of the car was the last concrete memory and then I was lost in my own thoughts until we pulled up right outside the main entrance. My mind was in overdrive, flooded by thoughts and sheer terror at what I was about to do. I kept thinking of Milly, my family, the fact that I would have
one less limb. It was a jumbled-up mess, which I realise was probably due to extreme anxiety and the enormity of what I was about to do. There would be no going back from this and while I was ready, it was still terrifying.

The one thing I do remember asking Jamie repeatedly was would he still find me attractive with one leg? He kept reassuring me that he would but I wasn’t even listening to him. I just kept asking and asking him. I still felt hope in my heart and I knew I was doing the right thing but the minute we entered the hospital the real terror began. I was on my crutches as we walked across the foyer to check in and my head started to spin. Sick to the pit of my stomach, I started to shake with fear. There was no going back, but that didn’t make it any easier.

On the day of my operation, right from the start things didn’t go well. I had to have an epidural beforehand, which helps your brain forget the pain. The theory is that after you’ve had the amputation there will be no phantom limb pain as once you are put to sleep, the body will have no memory of you ever having experienced any pain where the amputation takes place, as you never felt it happen.

In reality, having the epidural was a nightmare as the doctor involved had trouble finding a place to put it in. I blame this on me being so grossly overweight that they just couldn’t get the right space on my spine. This meant the numbness worked on some parts of my body but not on others. I knew my twenty-one and a half stones would be a problem for the operation but I never expected it to hamper it this much before we’d even got off the starting blocks. The doctor concerned had to repeatedly administer the epidural but it just wouldn’t work in the way that it should have done.

I then had to just sit there for forty-five minutes being monitored before I went down to Theatre. During that time Jamie spoke to me to calm my nerves. It was the first time I thought: ‘Oh God, what if something goes wrong and I can’t see Milly again?’ That time was awful and an absolute eternity. Thoughts raced through my mind. I was truly terrified about what I was about to do and what was going to happen to me. Jamie walked by my side, holding my hand as they took me down to Theatre. Ashen-faced, he looked more scared than me and I thought I could see tears in his eyes. Before saying he’d see me in a few hours he hugged me tight and told me everything was going to be alright and how much he loved me and couldn’t wait to see me after the surgery. We kissed and then I was taken through some doors on my trolley into Theatre.

I tried focusing on the strip lighting to control my fear. All I could think about was Milly and Jamie and how I couldn’t wait to hold both of them in my arms again. I was then given an injection to put me to sleep. Mr Porter squeezed my shoulder and said, ‘Don’t worry, Hannah. Everything is going to be OK.’ Then I was asked to count down from ten and when I got to eight everything went black.