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Grandmother Elaine Purcell has been a wheelchair user since undergoing an operation to remove a cancerous tumour from her back |
‘I’m stronger, I’ve learned to ask for things’
Grandmother tells how she copes in wheelchair – and about an upsetting fall in the street
ELAINE Purcell is used to being stoical in the face of adversity.
As a child she suffered from chest infections and bronchitis and attended John Keats Special School, now Frank Barnes’ School for deaf children in Adelaide Road, until she was 11.
At 41 she was left paralysed from the chest down after surgeons removed a cancerous tumour in her back.
By the time doctors realised the severity of her condition, initially thought to be a pulled muscle, the infected lower ribs on her right-hand side also had to be removed.
Nine years on, the 50-year-old mother of two and proud grandparent of two toddlers, takes up to 30 tablets a day, including Prozac and painkillers. She said: “I have constant nerve pain shooting up and down my body.
“The only thing that keeps me going is that maybe tomorrow I won’t have so much pain.”
Although she leads as independent a life as she can at her home in Kingsgate Road, West Hampstead, where a hoist hangs above her bed in the renovated downstairs lounge and the en-suite wet room is kitted out with padded grab rails and shower seating, Elaine knows even the simplest outing can result in disaster.
On one of her regular trips to her local pharmacy two weeks ago, the back wheel of her electric wheelchair fell off the ramp and she toppled out on to the ground where she lay, vulnerable and unable to pick herself up.
The ABC pharmacy in Belsize Road have apologised for not noticing her plight, but Elaine is grateful to staff from the Kingsgate Community Centre across the road who rushed to her aid, bringing her a blanket to keep her warm until an ambulance arrived.
A disco diva in her teens, Elaine worked as a kitchen assistant and a child-minder when she left Hampstead School.
After the operation in December 1998 she expected to be walking again within a few weeks, but, five months later, she was still an inpatient at Middlesex hospital and had contracted the MRSA bug.
Elaine said: “When I came round it felt like something had bound me around the chest. I couldn’t feel anything. The nurses said it would take a couple of days for the feeling to come back in my legs but it never did.”
Two years later and Elaine was back under the surgeon’s knife.
One of the screws securing the bars holding up her torso had pierced her aorta, the main artery in the body.
“Thank God it didn’t burst,” said Elaine, “otherwise I’d be dead.”
As the daughter of Irish immigrants and one of six siblings, she has a large family.
Her father, sister, niece and brother also live in West Hampstead and her sister Marie, who lives in Woolwich, comes to visit four times a week.
Elaine is a keen gardener but most of all dreams of swimming with her grandchildren Megan, six, and Katie, five.
“I dream to float,” she said.
“I’d love for them to see me swim. But I haven’t been able to go on holiday since all this because I can’t find anywhere that can cater to my needs.”
Elaine is now reflective about her circumstances.
She said: “I was a very quiet, shy person since I was a child.
“But I have more confidence now than I ever had because I have had to speak up for myself and ask for things. It’s made me stronger that way.” |
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