I find I had to believe it has been almost 15 years this summer that I had a BMX racing accident that caused a coup injury on Brain (shaking of the brain on impact) when my head hit the track, and what a journey I have taken since then.

Would I change what has happened to me? No I would not! I have meet so many amazing people and learnt more than I think I would have done if this had not happened to me.  I think I would change the fact my short term memory drives me up the wall sometime, especially when I’m at work and can’t remember the names of people, and objects which I fell makes me look stupid sometimes.  But I feel it made me a better person and appreciate that how different everybody is in ways I would have never seen before.

The first two years after the accident from what I remember was really hard understanding why I felt so different and could not remember anything in particular from the few years before. Pictures and photos disturbed me as I could not see myself visually sitting or standing in that situation, was really weird.

The more the years rolled on the more memories I had of the present time after head injury and the times before started to not matter as much.   I just plodded along for a while.

I found some part time volunteer work with a disabled sailors association which showed me that I was able to do more than most people with disabilities and my confidence built. This was all down to Headway opening doors for me and sending me on courses and guiding me back to work as I wanted to work to support myself and my family.

At some point in the third year after the injury I started to look at designs of disabled vehicles.  I went to college studying motor vehicles believing this would help me gain confidence and see how much I could still learn.  I made small steps to start with. I passed my course and did some Basic English as well which I found hard as I couldn't recall the alphabet sometimes.

I believed that I could make a disabled motorised bike for wheel chair users after seeing something on you tube that inspired me. Why I don’t know but something told me to build it!

I built it, rode it to Headway and said look what I’ve made! Sharon the manager of Headway Portsmouth was amazed! “What is that!” she said “ you made that?”

Anyway to cut a long story short Headway helped me to get companies interested in what I had made by contacting the News which then got a lot of people interested in this crazy motorised vehicle I had made and I was contacted by companies who made disabled vehicles and bikes, if I could maybe come and work part time for them! So I did. I had nothing to lose only to gain.