A former British rugby player isn't letting a freak accident stop him from living life. After becoming paralyzed, he set his sights on becoming a mountain climber.
Ed Jackson, a former British rugby player, has climbed several mountains over the past few years including Matterhorn in the Alpes, Snowdon in Wales, Himlung Himal in Nepal, and Aiguille Dibona in France. The former rugby player became paralyzed from the shoulders down after a dive into a pool went wrong and left him with a spinal injury.
"I have limited movement down my left side, limited sensation down my right," Jackson told People. "Thus all four of his limbs are affected. I suffer with bladder, bowel, sexual function and temperature regulation issues. So I'm a long way off the professional athlete I was before. Having said that, I'm a long way further down the line than I should be. So all of those physical ailments come with a big dose of gratitude with it, too."
In 2017, the rugby player dove into the swimming pool, thinking it was six to eight feet. It was three feet instead, and he hit his head. Emergency services rushed him to the hospital. "I felt a bit sleepy," he recalls. "But it turns out what was supposed to be a 15-minute ambulance journey to the hospital ended up taking two-and-a-half hours because they kept having to pull over to resuscitate me."
Doctors told him that he would never walk again. "My prognosis was that I had a category A1, which is a complete spinal cord injury," he said. "So effectively the doctors told me that I was not going to walk again."
Former Rugby Player Turned Mountain Climber
However, Jackson learned to wiggle his toes while at the hospital. Continuing to improve at home, the former rugby player learned to walk using sticks and foot splints to support his body. Just a year later, Jackson decided to scale Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales.
"I did get some funny looks from professionals and family members alike," he said. "But I was really motivated to try to pay back some of the funds that I've been supported with through the charity Restart—but also set myself a goal to keep me motivated as well as try and inspire some other people that maybe their prognosis didn't necessarily have to be the answer."
From there, the rugby player turned into a mountain climber, launching a charity Milimeteres 2 Mountains. He hopes his story will be an inspiration to others.
"Nothing I'm doing now I ever imagined I'd be able to do," he said. "But it just took actually having those walls bashed down and me just going, 'Do you know what? I'll just give it a go and see what will happen,' to end up in this place."
"I also hope that there's a strong message through the film of the power of kindness and giving back and looking after each other," he added. "The most amazing thing about the charity has been the sense of community. We've felt the support from other people, and now our supporting others is helping us too. Just trying to nurture that environment of support and being kind is also a really powerful message for us."
