(12PressRelease.com) My name is Dale Rutherford. I have always been musical and have grown up playing the piano, singing, playing the flute, harp, and oboe to different degrees. In 2004 I was a 19 year old studying classical vocal studies at Trinity College of Music in Greenwich, London. I had a promising career ahead of me and was living in Lewisham with 2 flat mates from my previous University. The first half of 2004 had been the best 6 months of my life. On the 1st September 2004, only 2 weeks after my 20th birthday I had a terrible accident.
The day of the 31st August I had spent running around various places. Most of the day I had spent with my boyfriend of nearly 2 years (Mark Seddon) trying to find some new suits for his new job that he was due to start the next day. Mark has always been an entrepreneur, selling his first self built business when he was 18. Mark was finally moving into the area he wanted to be with his new job. Later that day when I was due to head back to my University I received a call from a very close friend telling me that he had come back from his holiday (a day earlier than I expected). We had spent all Summer together apart from the time he was away so we arranged to go out that night. On the way home from our town centre I told my friend that we would stop by my house and if my parents were in then I would stay there, but they weren‘t so I stayed with him and his friend and went back to his parents house nearby. Around 1 am I ran towards his swimming pool and dived in head first. The problem was the pool didn‘t make sense, and I had dived into the shallow end. I remember coming to the surface and managing to make it clear that I wasn‘t ok. I was taken out of the pool and the paramedics were called.
I was taken to hospital in the town where Mark lived and around 2 am when he found out what had happened he ran the few miles to the hospital, to find my parents with me in A and E. It turned out that I had a fractured skull and my neck had broken on impact causing a spinal cord injury. I was put in traction for a couple of days which involves a metal frame being screwed into your head and hanging weights off it, it wasn‘t pleasant! Before they operated on my neck, I couldn‘t feel or move my legs and most of my body, but my hands and arms were ok. After my operation I couldn‘t move my hands and they were balled up in fists, I couldn‘t do anything! Just a couple of days later one of my lungs collapsed and the hospital were forced to do a Tracheotomy which is a tube that goes into your throat so that you can breathe. I was sedated and put onto a ventilator in the High Dependency Unit. Having the tube and giant hole in my throat meant that I couldn‘t speak, and it suddenly dawned on me that not being able to talk or use my hands wasn‘t good news for my singing career and piano playing!
Eventually I was moved to a Spinal Unit and my parents and Mark moved into a flat nearby to stay with me. The day Mark was supposed to start his new job he contacted them and told them what had happened. That day Mark gave up his career to look after me and hasn‘t left my side since. We have been through a lot in the Spinal Unit and afterwards. 4 months later I moved into a Private hospital and few months after that changed to an outpatient and moved into the flat with Mark. It is massively hard work to look after someone who is totally dependent, especially when you are 20 and have only been together two years. In 2005 we moved into a tiny flat in London to be in the same road as a clinic I had started attending, and again moved back to my parent‘s place which they had rushed to adapt for me before finally moving into a place of our own in November 2007. My parents were wonderful and found me a place that had ample room to move around and have a bedroom downstairs and adapted it accordingly.
Mark has been with me through everything, moved from place to place, given up his career, and travelled across the world. Luckily we have a lot in common; we both really enjoy business and have just launched our own website. Everything we have been through has made us want to help others and we figured that the way to help people in this economic climate was to pay their bills for them! www.getitpaid.co.uk is an online competition that you enter, register a bill and if you win your prize is having a household bill paid for you! So far we have paid an EDF energy bill and a council tax bill, and the feedback we have had back from the people that won is amazing. The stress and tension it takes out of your life to have one of those pesky bills disappear is immense! We want to continue to grow our business to help more and more people like we have helped and cared for each other over the 8 years we have been together, so if we can make a success of our first business venture together like we have our relationship we can take a little piece of stress out of a lot of people‘s lives!
Currently we are living in Brentwood with our 3 cats, trying to make a success of our new business. I am back singing and teaching as well as working for AllClear Insurance, a company designed to provide Travel Insurance for people with pre-existing medical conditions. The journey has been very long and its not over yet, but I would like to say to anyone that has been told by the medical professional that their goal is impossible, that it isn‘t. I have recovered so far beyond what they said I would, and anyone can do the same regardless of age or problem.
