Never Broken (17 page)

At the do, Milly said to me: ‘Everybody’s told me you are really brave, Mummy, and that you’ve done really well,’ as if she really thought: ‘Well, that’s what they say.’ So she had me in fits of laughter.

The minute I got home I took my leg off and got into the bath. My stump was completely raw and I had huge, angry blisters. Completely exhausted but elated at the same time, as I lay in the hot water, I thought: ‘That’s another box ticked so now I can get on with the rest of my life.’ I couldn’t walk
on my prosthetic for two weeks afterwards, but it was worth it. And my boobs had held up – but only because they were already so far gone it really couldn’t have got much worse.

Three days after completing the run I relegated my wheelchairs to the basement of my house. I had two hot-pink wheelchairs as the one they initially made me at Headley Court was made to fit my twenty-one-and-a-half-stone frame. When I lost all the weight it was no longer the right size for me so I had to get another, smaller wheelchair. After the marathon, I said: ‘It’s time for the wheelchairs to go.’ It was another huge moment because I didn’t ever want to use either of them again. Both are still in my basement with all the junk that I don’t use any more.

The only time I spoke about taking part in the marathon again was two weeks later when I went back to Headley Court for rehab and I told the lads: ‘I did the London Marathon the other week.’ They said: ‘Did you really?’ I was so glad I did it, but ultimately, it was just the start of a whole new world opening up for me.

A month later I went back to work, doing the admin job I’d done before I was injured, in Bulford, which I combined with continued three-week stints of rehabilitation at Headley Court. I was incredibly uptight and nervous about returning to work as I’d been out for so long and I worried about how I’d be viewed as an amputee. But my new colleagues were incredibly supportive and it was good for me as I needed to go and face my demons about what going back to work in the Army meant.

At first I took a ‘suck it and see’ approach to decide if Army life was still for me. I hadn’t known anything else since I was seventeen years old. On the one hand I desperately wanted to
go back, but it was still incredibly daunting after all that had happened. It was great to be around people, I loved the social side and it continued to help me grow in confidence. I was no longer the bystander in my own life, watching the world pass me by from a wheelchair, and it felt good. The admin role meant I worked pretty much nine to five, so I was a normal working mum, spending all my free time with Milly and cherishing every minute of it, as I knew that’s what mattered.

Six months after the marathon someone from Blesma rang me and said: ‘Do you fancy skiing with us in Colorado?’ Even though I’d never skied on two legs, let alone one, I said: ‘Yes, please!’ and my Commanding Officer was happy to support me going. Headley Court supported me so much in every way, as rehab was as much about building confidence on my legs, as well as self-confidence. Meeting up with all the boys again, many of whom I knew from Headley Court, was great. British Airways upgraded us all to First Class, gave us champagne and really looked after us all, which was out of this world.

After checking into the hotel we all met up for a few glasses of wine in the bar, where I made quite a splash. A few glasses of chardonnay, combined with the champagne on board and jet lag, left me drunk as a lord and I knocked over a Christmas tree in the hotel reception. Because of that shameful incident I was nicknamed ‘Geoffrey’. I haven’t got a clue where the name came from but it stuck and everyone found it hilarious at the time.

On the first morning, and nursing a hangover, we were given all the kit we needed to ski. My first question was: ‘How do you get a ski boot on a prosthetic foot?’ and the answer was simple: put a carrier bag on it first so you can slip it in and out.

I was totally relaxed until I got to the nursery slope, and
even though it wasn’t that steep, inwardly I was freaking out. I felt more confident about doing the marathon than I did about being able to ski, so I said to Brendan West, the guy who organises the trips for Blesma: ‘I’m really shitting myself. What if I can’t ski?’

He laughed and said: ‘Come on, Geoffrey, you’ll be fine – you can do it.’

With that a triple amputee snowboarded straight past me and I thought: ‘OK, if he can do it, I’ve got no excuses.’

Then someone else whizzed past, doing one-track skiing – where you ski using just one leg without your prosthetic – shouting: ‘Come on, Hannah, it’s amazing!’

So I decided then I couldn’t bottle out and in truth, I didn’t want to. The first hurdle I had to overcome was using the button lift, which is a challenge in itself with a false leg. I had to slide the rubber disc between my legs all the while trying to manoeuvre my ski on a foot I couldn’t feel. A few times I rolled off, but because every one of us had two instructors that was a real security blanket as I knew I wasn’t going to go whizzing off, down a mountain, unable to stop myself. They had me skiing on baby slopes within an hour of conquering the ski lift. Admittedly I wasn’t following all the rules while I was going downhill and staying upright, but I did it. I fell over more times than I can recount but I loved every minute and it was another moment of ‘It doesn’t matter that I only have one leg, I can do this’, which was just incredible.

I saw Brendan at lunchtime and he said: ‘How was it?’

‘It is absolutely brilliant! I’m loving it!’ I replied.

The trip was for ten days, and I skied all day and got drunk every night and it was good for everyone. One guy, who was a double amputee, had been a bit in his shell at the start of the
week, but by the end he was the life and soul, whizzing down the slopes at breakneck speed in a skiing chair.

Towards the end of the week there was a fancy-dress party, so my roommate and I decided to get the bus to Walmart to buy stuff for our costumes. We were both like Bambi on ice as you can’t feel a thing with a prosthetic in snow boots and I was dressed, of course, as a Christmas tree with about 25 feet of garlands draped around me. My roommate was dressed as an elf so she was dubbed: ‘Geoffrey the Christmas Tree’s Little Helper’ by the lads. Just getting out and doing stuff on our own was a confidence booster.

Flying home I thought: ‘I’ve done a marathon and I can ski now and I couldn’t even do that with two legs.’ It all reaffirmed in my mind that I could have a normal life.

But there was just one thing I still wanted to do – and it involved going back to have surgery. I’d been so energetic that I’d continued to lose weight but my waist size was much bigger than it should have been as I had a lot of excess skin on my stomach from where previously I’d been much fatter. Now it wasn’t plumped up by all the surplus weight I’d been carrying around, the skin had become crinkly and creased and there was an apron of tissue that no amount of exercise would shift. It was uncomfortable, it had rubbed me raw during the marathon and the ski trip and it was debilitating to lug this excess skin around with me.

So, I decided to have a tummy tuck costing £10,500, using more of my Army compensation money. It would be painful – but not compared to what I’d already been through. It was really important to me to have it done, as while I’d reconstructed myself mentally, I wanted to reconstruct myself physically too. I told my mum before the op and
she was really concerned about me electing to have another round of surgery.

She said: ‘Hannah, I’ve got your best interests at heart and I’m worried at how much your body can take.’

And I said to her: ‘Mum, can you imagine what it’s like to have to stuff skin into your trousers every day when you are in your twenties? I just don’t want to do that for the rest of my life.’ She also knows me and I was going to do what I was going to do.

So while she expressed her concern at me having yet another operation, when she heard my views she said: ‘While I think it’s a lot for your body to take, ultimately it’s your decision.’

Again I found a very reputable surgeon and as he examined me I said: ‘I don’t mind a vertical scar, so can I have a fleur-de-lis?’ This procedure involves two incisions, across your bikini line and vertically from under your boobs down the tummy, and the skin is pulled tight around your torso, as well as vertically. It’s especially for people who have a lot of excess skin but it’s not for the faint-hearted. I wasn’t worried about the scars as my tummy was already covered in silvery lines from all the surgery I’d had previously.

Right away he said: ‘Absolutely, that is the right procedure for you, it will really make such a difference.’

He booked me in only a couple of weeks later. I wasn’t nervous at all – I just wanted to look normal again. He came to see me once I came round after the op and said: ‘Look down and feel the skin.’ It was so taut, he was obviously pleased with the job he’d done and I was thrilled to see I had a perfectly flat tummy. It even appeared neater than before as he’d been able to cut away a lot of the scarring I’d had from my life-saving surgeries and shrapnel injuries. There were
roughly seventy dissolvable stitches. I was in quite a bit of pain afterwards and you have to wear a surgical corset for six weeks, so Jamie helped me and had Milly at his house so I could recover at home.

Ultimately, it was the cosmetic operation that changed my life the most as I no longer had this unsightly sagging skin to tuck in every day. For me that was a massive moment; it gave me huge amounts of body confidence and it felt like I was slowly becoming me again.

After I’d recovered from the surgery, I went motor biking with the charity Bike Tours for the Wounded along Route 66 in America. It was great to be one of the lads again.We all rode pillion on Harley-Davidson motorbikes and my rider had speakers so he blared out rock music as we sped through the Nevada desert. Before the tummy tuck I’d have been sore from my excess skin but this was something I was able to enjoy as a ‘normal’ person (albeit an amputee). And riding along I felt my body was no longer a prison – I felt truly free. ‘This is one of those life moments which are absolutely amazing,’ I thought to myself. While standing at the side of the Grand Canyon I burst into tears, it was so beautiful. I’d never seen anything like it before and I felt so small and insignificant. I thought: ‘God, in the grand scheme of life, things really aren’t that bad.’

At Headley Court I also learned to play sledge hockey, the only full-contact ice sport using a sledge that has one ski under it. You have a shortened hockey stick, you wear a helmet with a cage and full-body armour and you’re allowed to hit your opponent anywhere you want to. All the boys took great delight in hitting me everywhere they could, pushing me over, so I spent half the time on my side on the ice, as getting upright is a total nightmare.

I also went indoor ski-diving for the first time, which was really good, and they had a surf machine, where I rode the air. I wasn’t very good, but I did everything I could so I could go home and tell Milly the stories, and each achievement was also another building block of confidence. Shortly after I returned from the US trip in 2013, I completed my rehabilitation at Headley Court. They must have done a good job in giving me my confidence back as instead of wanting to blindly cling on, I knew I didn’t love the Army anymore. For me it didn’t have the same draw it once had, mainly because physically I struggled to achieve what I had before I was injured.

Then, when I was told that my unit was going to deploy to Afghanistan the following year, it became a watershed moment for me. I was able to do a lot of PT, which was great, and some new fitness tests had been brought in especially for amputees so I knew if I could pass it, they would consider me for redeployment. But there was an insurmountable hurdle: the moment I was told about Afghanistan, I knew I didn’t want to go for I would never leave Milly again. Deep down, I knew with my amputation that I would struggle to function as a soldier on deployment – from the basics of trying to keep my stump clean to prevent infection to the fact that I would find it harder to defend myself with my prosthetic limb.

I didn’t want to spend the rest of my career sat behind a desk – that wasn’t what I joined the Army for. Thanks to the Headley Court rehabilitation and charity support I had achieved more than I’d ever thought possible. Yet I also recognised that physically I couldn’t give the commitment to the Military that it needed. I couldn’t be completely dedicated to the job as my heart wasn’t in it because I wasn’t able to do the job as well as I once had because of my injuries. Because of that it didn’t
hold the same draw and it wasn’t for me anymore. That, combined with the fact my priorities had changed and I knew I wanted to be there for my daughter, meant I recognised my career was coming to an end. Going back to work was another thing I had to tick off my list on the road to being ready to get out of the Military, as it meant I knew I’d moved forward with my life.

In my heart I knew I needed to move on with my life in more ways than one. And the next stage was to also introduce this ‘new me’ to the outside world and in particular to the opposite sex.

It was time for me to start dating again.

T
he thought of even chatting to a man I didn’t know, let alone going out on a date with him, was a terrifying prospect. It was a hurdle I had to get over if I ever wanted to move on with my personal life. Yet the thought still scared me half to death. Not only had I been with Jamie for so long, I now had the added stress of having to tell any new man in my life I only had one leg. I couldn’t begin to comprehend how you would bring that up in conversation. Even the thought of saying it out loud to a prospective date terrified me.

Since my gastric bypass, boob job and tummy tuck I was slowly beginning to feel good about myself and I continued to lose the last few pounds of excess weight. These changes in my body were triggering changes in my personality too. I felt like life was flowing back into me. I started wanting to take care of myself not only inside, by eating healthily and keeping up with the exercise programme, but also my appearance on
the outside. After years of not even bothering to put on make-up I started to take pride in myself again.

As a treat, and as all my old stuff was decaying in a drawer, I decided to have a makeover. I went into my local MAC make-up store and told them I was feeling dowdy and needed a complete overhaul and a new look. I didn’t mention a word about why, as for once I just wanted to be like anyone else. In the end I splashed out more than £300 on make-up. I felt fabulous and looked it too. It sounds like a lot of money, and it is a lot, but for me it was priceless as it represented yet another part of starting to love and take care of myself again.

In my mind I knew, as I would probably leave the Army in the not-too-distant future, I was going to have to think about what to do with my life next. I’d always loved having and giving beauty treatments. Even in Iraq I never skimped on pamper nights. So it seemed natural to me that I should think about pursuing this as a career – although swapping machine guns for nail guns would be quite a lifestyle change! Facing a future potentially without the Army was such a lot for me to take on board, but I knew I had to consider what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

For me the real light-bulb moment came a few weeks after my MAC makeover when I went to a local beautician near me. I’d always loved having false eyelashes and I was mucking around on Twitter one night when I saw one of the girls from the cast of
TOWIE
had these fantastic long new lashes. So I googled to see where I could have them done and I found a place near me. I booked an appointment and the lovely beautician who applied my lashes asked if I’d like to have my nails done. We got chatting while I had a full manicure – I
hadn’t had my nails done since I’d ripped them all off in the rubble, so at first I apologised for how unkempt they were.

When she laughed and said: ‘Don’t be silly, I’ve seen far worse,’ we started gossiping and then I started to tell her what had happened to me. I told her about the day my life had changed, I told her about being buried in the rubble and how my entire world had been torn apart. Then I told her that I had a prosthetic leg. She asked me to show it to her and she was amazed that even though it was quite a basic model, it did have little toes and nails on it. I admitted that the only reason I hated it was because since the blast I hadn’t been able to wear any sandals.

Without missing a beat she said: ‘Why not? Why don’t you just paint your prosthetic toes?’

I then asked: ‘Please will you do it for me?’ It was the first time I had asked anyone who was a virtual stranger to me to do anything intimate that involved my prosthetic, but I felt so relaxed in there and she was so marvellous that it seemed a natural question to ask. When I left the salon I felt amazing, even though the reality was I’d just had a lick of bright pink varnish on my nails and my eyelashes done. I thought: ‘I’d like to help other women feel good about themselves.’ So the idea for a future career as a beautician was born.

I spent the next few days researching online what qualifications I would need to train and then set about applying to my local college for them. I had a few thousand pounds saved up to pay for the courses. Within a few months I’d begun training in my spare time. First it was massage, then false eyelashes and then a course on HD brows: basically anything and everything it would take me to become a fully qualified beautician. I must have been one of the college’s keenest pupils. I loved going
there and roping in all my mates as guinea pigs for treatments. Even my poor mum was getting every treatment under the sun, from waxing to brows! The minute I got one qualification, I was on to getting the next.

As well as my training I was still getting my own beauty treatments done at my local salon. One of the biggest moments was when I decided to go and get my first pair of flat sandals and afterwards, with them still in a shoebox, I went down and had a manicure with my ‘good’ foot and while it dried, my prosthetic leg had ruby red nails painted on, too. Then I walked out of the salon with my new open-toed shoes on. It was such a small thing, but to be able to go out and have matching feet for the first time in years felt like yet another milestone had been ticked off.

I forged an amazing bond with my beauty therapist, who really helped me to get my confidence back, so much so that she suggested we should go into business together. I thought: ‘Why not?’ as it seemed like a natural progression for me. We went as far as getting a business plan together and later, we set up a limited company, but I began to get second thoughts as I was worried that I was taking too much on at such an early stage in both my rehabilitation and my beauty training. I couldn’t rid myself of the little niggling doubt that maybe this wasn’t right for me as I was trying to do too much too soon. After all, I had so many huge decisions to make about my life. I’d overcome so much in such a short time; I’d never run a business before but knew it was going to take a lot of my time and I was just beginning to rebuild not only myself but also my relationship with Milly. The truth is my overriding priority was to be there for her and to make up for all the years of time we lost. After a few weeks of soul-searching I decided I couldn’t go on with
the business because my family had to come first. I went to the salon to tell my friend and we agreed that as the timing wasn’t right for me we would put everything on hold.

Worrying about what I should do with my career and my future did have a small silver lining. The last few pounds of the weight I’d gained when I was ill finally dropped off and I was now back to the size I was in the Army before the blast. People kept saying how well I looked and I knew that the waistbands on the clothes I’d bought as I’d got thinner were getting looser and looser, and they were even beginning to swamp my frame. I knew it was time to measure myself and think about smartening up my appearance.

One night I took the tape measure out and I was astounded when I measured myself and my waist was only 27 inches. I’d finally got down to a size 10 from a 24. It was the final milestone. I was ecstatic and I thought: ‘Right, the time has come to get back out there and start socialising properly again with my girlfriends and having a laugh.’ I’d missed out on so much of that. I used to love a girlie night out and having a drink and a dance but for years I’d had to shut that entire part of my life and my personality down. It was like I’d pressed pause and now it was time to push the play button again.

Around that time I thought I needed to start thinking seriously about getting a decent wardrobe of clothes again as I’d now reached my target size. I decided, along with some gentle persuasion from Nikki, I couldn’t go out on my first proper Saturday night with girls in my baggy tracksuit bottoms and a jumper, so I went on a little shopping spree in my local department store. It was strange looking at some of the little dresses and tops and actually thinking I could wear that and I don’t need to hide my body away anymore.

I was still unsure of myself so I took Nikki along to give me some confidence. She was brilliant and really encouraged me to go for it. I played it safe and picked out a lovely black dress which went to my knees and a pair of matching low black heels. I didn’t even try them on in the shop – I still felt self-conscious about going into changing rooms in case they were communal and I had to show my body off to other women. Even though I looked great, in my head there was still this little voice telling me I didn’t.

When we got back to mine later that afternoon we opened a bottle of wine and spent the next few hours getting ready. I went the whole hog with a fake tan and false eyelashes. When I put on my dress and shoes and stood in front of the mirror I barely recognised myself. For a moment I stood there in silence and Nikki just kept saying: ‘Oh, my God, Hannah, you look amazing!’ and for the first time since everything that had happened I actually felt it. I just kept running my hands up and down the side of my dress – I couldn’t believe how good I looked.

By the time we made our way out that night, my confidence boosted by a glass of white wine, I was buzzing. It was like my first nights out as a teenager. Even though we were only going out to a few of the local bars, to me it was such a big step. It was like being given VIP access to the biggest, best nightclub in the world. I’ll never forget walking into the first bar, as for the first time in years I actually strode in with a bit of confidence. I was aware of a few men looking at me as I walked up to the bar to buy us both a drink.

One handsome young guy smiled over at me and then moved beside me in the queue. His chat was really friendly, just the basic stuff like: ‘Who was I out with?’ and ‘Where were we
going to be going later on?’ I pointed out Nikki and a few of our other friends then he offered to buy us all a drink. I just laughed and said we’d be getting our own. As I walked back from the bar to my friends it dawned on me that speaking to a handsome stranger at a bar wasn’t something that had happened to me in a very long time. I had lost so much of my confidence due to the weight gain that as I hadn’t liked myself in any way I’d found it incredible that anyone else would. In my head I was still that invisible, fat person. I realised that night that the reality was very different and men were finding me very attractive.

That fleeting conversation with the good-looking stranger changed everything; it changed my entire perception of myself. From then on my confidence just started to grow and grow. Jamie would have Milly alternate weekends and when I had my time on my own, I loved my girly nights out. Blokes were always offering to buy me drinks or they would ask for a number, and while I was polite and maybe had a quick chat and a laugh I didn’t take it seriously as it was still a bit of a shock to the system. But as the weeks went by my confidence grew and bolstered by a few white wines I began to relax and let my hair down a bit more. If there was an attractive bloke who offered to buy my mates and me a drink I’d think: ‘What the hell! I’ll let him.’

The penny had finally dropped that I was attractive again and the person I saw when I looked in the mirror was beginning to change. Gone was the twenty-one stone, one-legged monster and in front of me was a size-10 attractive young woman. It was yet another milestone being reached in my rehabilitation programme and in the accepting of, and learning to love, the person I was.

After I’d been going out on the town for about three months I felt myself getting bolder. By then, I’d been on loads of trips with Blesma, which not only had given me confidence in allowing me to try something new but all the lads who were also there were so ‘balls out’ about their prosthetics that some of that attitude was rubbing off on me. Many of them wore shorts with their titanium legs – which were often decorated with Union Jacks. They were proud of their prosthetics and why shouldn’t they be? After all, we had all lost limbs serving our country. I remember on the first night out on our ski trip one of the lads whipped off his leg and used it as a drinking cup for some of the local lager and everyone toasted our first day on the slopes from it; even the locals joined in. It was such a fun, spontaneous thing to do. It was all about being proud of who you are and what got you to the place you are in, and that’s something they taught me in spades. This was one of loads of incidents I’d been part of, so they were all in my mind and firmly in my subconscious.

One night I was standing at the bar and this older guy was giving me some cheesy chat-up lines. It was innocent enough but he was telling me how I was so beautiful I took his breath away. I don’t know what came over me, probably my sense of cheekiness fuelled by a couple of drinks, but I spun round and said: ‘I’ve got something that will really take your breath away.’ With that, I whipped off my leg and laid it out on the bar. He just burst out laughing and so did I, but he never really batted an eyelid. We ended up having a really good chat about it and he was just so positive and so nice that from that night on it was my modus operandi just to tell people about my amputation and get it out in the open as soon as possible.

As far as men were concerned I’d decided that while I had
lots of fun flirtations I was never going to meet someone serious in a bar in Winchester. I had loads of male friends and lots of admirers, although I never took up any offers, but I was looking for someone I had a special spark with. I wanted a relationship, not a fling. Friends of mine knew a guy they thought I’d like, so one night when we were out in a bar they brought him along. The attraction was instant. He was gorgeous and because he knew friends of mine and he also had Army connections he already knew about my leg. That meant it was no big deal and there was no pressure on me to have to reveal anything to him as he already knew. We’d both done a lot of travelling so we spent the evening with friends, just chatting to them and each other about the places we’d been. Nothing at all romantic happened, even though there was a definite spark. We swapped numbers at the end of the night, which was the first time I’d actually done this with any man since the split with Jamie. While it was a big deal, I was determined to remain fairly casual about it and although I hoped he would contact me, I also thought: ‘What the hell? If he doesn’t, he doesn’t.’