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SPINAL NETWORK NEWS 3<br />
An Enduring<br />
Feeling of Guilt<br />
Peter Thornton<br />
Editorial<br />
HARD WORK: Brad put everything into his rehabilitation. Photo credit: Josh Letchworth.<br />
It’s 3am and I can’t sleep. My girls are terrible<br />
sleepers, and are wide awake, so now I’m<br />
wide awake and my mind begins to race.<br />
I’m reading Brad Smeele’s book Owning It and it’s having a<br />
profound effect on my life. My mind wanders to the last<br />
chapter I read before I hit the pil<strong>low</strong>. I’ve gone through the<br />
highs and <strong>low</strong>s of his fledgling professional career to that<br />
moment, where it all came crashing down and he broke<br />
his neck in Florida. I haven’t been able to put it down.<br />
The level of detail and insight into what Brad experienced in<br />
those times is heart-breaking, enlightening and humbling.<br />
I am overwhelmed with guilt. I broke my neck when I was<br />
17. I was playing secondary school rugby at a tournament<br />
in Rotorua when the scrum collapsed. The opposition<br />
forwards pushed again with my head and neck stuck and I<br />
suffered a hairline fracture at C2 in my vertebrae. My<br />
spinal cord was intact.<br />
Now that moment is more than 25 years ago and my<br />
memories of what happened are a blur. I remember the<br />
ambulance ride, being strapped on a wooden board for<br />
many hours on end, I can still feel the fear of going<br />
through an MRI to confirm that my neck was broken, I<br />
can hear the doctor’s words where I was told I’d likely<br />
never walk again, I can still see the look on my parents’<br />
faces as they walked into my hospital room.<br />
—Peter Thornton<br />
Over that year I don’t know<br />
how or why, but I made a full<br />
recovery. I feel forever guilty<br />
about that.<br />
What happened next is not so clear. Back in Auckland, my<br />
church had heard the news of my accident and were<br />
praying for me. A lot of people were praying for me.<br />
Over the next few days, I left Rotorua Hospital and was<br />
told my parents could drive me home to Auckland. My<br />
neck was still highly unstable, and as it turned out it was<br />
terrible advice. If we had stopped suddenly coming home<br />
from Rotorua, my neck could have broken. It was like<br />
rolling a dice.<br />
The spinal specialists in Auckland admitted me straight<br />
away, and I was in a neck brace for the <strong>res</strong>t of the year. I<br />
have clear memories of lying in my hospital bed looking<br />
up at the ceiling and being unsure of my future.
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