I was paralysed too, but a pact with my mum saved me from suicide
Dan Eley was left a quadriplegic after a tragic diving accident in South America but has promised to give life another go
AFTER a tragic diving accident left Dan Eley a quadriplegic, he felt like ending it all.
He was only 33 and working with a charity for impoverished children in Latin America when the incident left him paralysed from the shoulders down.
Just like the pact made in new film Me Before You, when Dan left hospital he asked his mum to help him end his life.
Mum Carolyn promised to take him to Dignitas, the Swiss clinic for voluntary euthanasia, on the condition that he gave life another go. If, after five years, he still felt the same way she would do as he wished.
Here, Dan, who lives at a care home in Godalming Surrey, and Carolyn, 70, also from Godalming, tell SAMANTHA BRICK their stories.
Dan: After studying psychology at university and then three years’ working as a teacher, I went to Latin America. I spent two years as a youth worker helping street children.
And just like Will in the film Me Before You, I loved sports and being active.
In 2009, I started work as an English teacher in a college in Cali, Colombia. On New Year’s Day 2010, I was on holiday in the Colombian Amazon. I attempted a running dive into what I now know was a shallow pool in Leticia, a remote town.
I was knocked unconscious. I woke up in a tiny village hospital. My condition was critical. In the days that followed I suffered three cardiac arrests, a collapsed lung and pneumonia. Three days later I was transferred to an intensive care unit in Bogota, the capital.
I asked: What's the point of living like this?
Dan
After another cardiac arrest, I was in such a bad way I’d given my consent to a “Do Not Resuscitate” notice.
Thanks to my family and friends’ fundraising £100,000 was raised to airlift me back to the UK. I spent nine months in the Stoke Mandeville Spinal Injury Hospital in Aylesbury, Bucks, where I received specialist treatment and started intensive rehab.
In hospital I’d been protected from what it meant to live paralysed. When I left, my mood plunged. I asked myself: “What’s the point of living like this?”
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When I went out with mates I was consumed with envy. I watched them with their girlfriends and saw them able to travel in ways I could only dream about.
That’s when I made Mum agree with me about whether or not to end my life. She made me promise I would give it five years.
So I focused on living. I became an ambassador for a spinal injury charity and was invited to be on the board of governors of my former school. In 2012 I launched my own charity to help underprivileged kids.
This summer I’m moving into my own flat in a care home that supports independent living. I will have my own place and my independence back. I still hope to one day fall in love and marry.
I haven’t totally come to terms with what happened because I still hope that one day there will be a cure and I’ll walk again. But I’ve learned to live with hope, not in hope.
Today life has strong purpose. People assume it’s courageous to choose to die. While I would never judge, it is far gutsier to face up to whatever life throws at you.
I’m living proof that life can get better.
FIND out more about The Dan Eley Foundation
The call every mum dreads
Carolyn: It’s the call every mum dreads.
Your son is in a primitive hospital thousands of miles away and has broken his neck. Dan’s sister Bridget and I immediately flew out to Colombia. When we arrived the doctors wanted us to allow Dan to die. To make matters worse Dan had worked with street children in South America and had contracted every disease going.
Under such uniquely awful conditions, if Dan had been my brother I’d have wanted to end his suffering. But I was his mother and I had recovered from a spinal injury. If I could recover, so could Dan.
When we got Dan to Stoke Mandeville, doctors there gave him a week to live. But he proved them wrong, too.
Yet Dan was told he would never recover from his paralysis. He told me he had nothing to live for.
I empowered Dan by promising I would help him end his life if he decided that was what he wanted. And he chose to carry on.
The promise I made to him still stands. But we haven’t discussed it for five years.
Dan works hard at rehabilitation and can now move from the shoulders upwards. He has a clear sense of purpose, has carried the Olympic Torch and received many awards, including one from the Prime Minister, for his voluntary work.
None of us could have dreamt he would come so far during those dark days in Colombia.