An horrific accident changed Carolyn Beaver’s life forever, but it hasn’t stopped her wedding dreams from coming true!
When Carolyn Beaver’s partner Doug Passmore proposed to her, he first got her blood pressure checked, then flossed her teeth. Finally, as he knelt beside her to massage moisturiser into her hands, Doug suddenly pulled out an engagement ring and asked her to marry him.
“I don’t think many people get their teeth flossed one minute then proposed to the next,” laughs Carolyn (31) of Whangerei.
“The engagement ring was his mother’s and although I had little feeling in my left hand, I was still able to feel the ring being slipped onto my finger. Doug got the doctor to check my blood pressure first to make sure I could cope with the surprise. He had to hide his nerves as he went through my bedtime routine. I honestly had no idea. It was a complete surprise.”
It’s a year since Carolyn fell from a horse while on her oE in the UK – an accident that left her paralysed from the chest down. While such a tragedy might break up many couples, it’s actually brought Doug and Carolyn even closer.
Even so, Carolyn bravely gave him an “out” when the extent of her injuries became clear.
“I took part in triathlons and horse riding before the accident. I didn’t want to be a burden on anyone, including Doug. I said that things were going to be very different from now on, so I understood if he changed his mind. Doug was great. He said ‘I don’t really like running that much and I want to be burdened.’ Not for one moment did he doubt how he felt and that was wonderful.”
The two, who are both vets, met in 1998 when they were students. Doug had organised a wildlife conference in his home country, South Africa, which Carolyn attended. They became long-distance friends and kept in touch until 2001, when they both went on their oE to the UK.
Friendship became love and the two, who lived in different towns in Britain, began talking about marriage in the weeks leading up to Carolyn’s accident.
Carolyn can remember the day of her fall clearly. She took a friend’s horse out for a ride and when passing a busy road, sensibly slowed the horse to a walk. Suddenly there was a really loud noise, a truck backfiring or a blow-out from a car. The horse got spooked and bolted.
She battled to get the frightened horse back under control but lost her balance. “I just remember falling. I don’t know if I hit a tree or if I just landed on my head, but I was unconscious for quite a while. Then I woke up and went to look at my watch to see how long I’d been out. But I could only move my arms slightly. I thought ‘That’s a bit weird’, then I realised that although I could feel my legs I couldn’t move them at all.”
A former St John Ambulance volunteer, Carolyn knew she could have a serious spinal injury. “I was lying across the root of a tree I think, so all I wanted to do was roll off it. But I knew that might sever my spinal cord and as I could still feel something, there was some hope that it was still intact.
“I took a deep breath to shout for help and a little feeble ‘Help’ came out. I thought ‘How am I going to be able to get help if no-one can hear or see me?'”
Luckily another rider found her and she was taken to hospital, where scans revealed shattered vertebrae with shards of bone embedded in her spinal cord. It took five hours of surgery to remove them.
After six days in intensive care, Carolyn could shrug her shoulders, but she could not move her fingers, straighten her arms or move her legs. “I had no movement below my chest, basically,” she says.
During six months of rehabilitation in the UK, Carolyn battled through long nights of painful muscle spasms. Fiercely independent, she also had to adjust to her new reliance on other people. Even then, she stayed positive.
“Right from the day I woke up in intensive care, I was just so thankful that I still had my mind. Being negative about it was not going to help my recovery.”
Six months after the fall, Carolyn was able to return to New Zealand, and the renowned Burwood Spinal Unit in Christchurch. But the challenges ahead will not just be physical.
“I wasn’t entitled to free rehabilitation in the UK, and because my accident happened overseas, my care here isn’t covered by ACC,” Carolyn explains. “I can’t work at the moment to pay for it, but on the plus side, I get to be near my family.”
Doug returned to the UK to work as a vet, so he could send money home to ease the burden. But the distance proved too much for this close-knit couple and he returned to New Zealand. The plan now is to spend two years in Christchurch while Carolyn completes her rehabilitation, then move back to Whangerei.
“Everybody’s hope is for me to walk again, but I tell them that if I can’t do that, it doesn’t mean I can’t have a good life. There are lots of options for being productive, even in a chair. I suspect I won’t be running around like I used to but, with the improvement that I’ve already shown, I hope to be walking again in some way.”
Carolyn is also determined to go back to work. “I could be marking veterinary exams or teaching. I don’t want to be dependent on the state all my life. I’d rather earn my own living.”
She dreams of driving again and still has unfulfilled travel plans with Doug. The couple also plan to have children one day. “I’ve wanted to be a mum for the last five years and that hasn’t changed,”” she smiles.
“I should be able to, although there may be more risks involved because of my injuries.”
Carolyn, who was only 12 when her mum died, wants to be married in the church where she is buried. “It will be a big wedding because of all our friends and extended family,” she says. “Life for Doug and me will be different from our original plans, but we still have so much ahead of us, and that’s so special.”
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