It was a sunny day in March 2012. I was a self-employed bricklayer, and had been asked to do a job in Cromer on the Norfolk coast. It was my first time on site. The job was to build nine houses, but there was a Grade II-listed brick building that had to stay. It needed underpinning to support the walls. There were no proper foundations, so we had to dig underneath and pour in concrete to stabilise it. We dug out the hole with an excavator. Just after lunch, I went into the hole, up to waist height, to clear the final bit of earth from under the corner wall with a shovel. That’s when I heard a great big bang.
Part of the building – a 6m-high wall – came straight down on top of me and covered me up to my neck. It happened so fast that I don’t recall the impact or feeling any pain. I could wiggle my toes and move the fingers on my right hand, but my left arm was badly crushed. The site foreman saw what happened, and my workmate Andrew rushed over to support my head with his hands. It was above the rubble, so I could breathe. I remember feeling happy to be alive.
A paramedic arrived after about 15 minutes. He was a trainee and wasn’t allowed to give me pain relief, so I had to wait 10 more minutes for another to turn up. I can’t recall the pain now, but it must have been immense. The second paramedic gave me morphine, then a fire crew turned up to get me out.
Some of the structure was still standing, and could have fallen at any point, so they shielded me with a digger bucket while they moved the rubble off me brick by brick. As it was removed, I could see my left arm was smashed to pieces. It took two and a half hours to get me out. I was airlifted to hospital and immediately had a six-hour operation to try to save my left arm. I’d broken every bone on the left side of my body, from my neck to my pelvis, and punctured my lung. I had 14 units of blood transferred. Without that, things could have been very different.
Over the next two weeks, I had another five operations on my arm, and they transplanted an artery from my leg to see if they could improve the blood flow, but that didn’t work. It started to smell and go blue. That’s when they decided it needed to come off.
I was quite pleased when I heard: after lying there in the high-dependency unit for a fortnight, unable to move, it was a relief to think something was going to change. I was left with about six inches of my left arm, which I can’t move very well. At least I’m right-handed.
I try to do as much as I did before, but it took a while to learn how to live with just one arm: things like doing up a shirt were impossible at first. I don’t use a prosthetic limb. They’re awkward to position, and get very heavy after a few hours.
I was worried about how I’d be able to play golf, but I started again not long after I came out of hospital.
I still do a bit of bricklaying, but I’ve had to find another way to make a living, so I project-manage small building work. It’s a different pace of life, but I enjoy it.
I was awarded £100,000 compensation for the loss of my limb, which helped me to adapt my home. My wife and two grown-up children have been very supportive. The company I was doing the work for was made to pay almost £50,000 in fines and costs. It had an impeccable safety record until my accident, but the judge criticised it for its significant failure in assessing the risk of the wall collapsing. He said there should have been “alarm bells ringing” because of the state of the building.
Little children in supermarkets point quite regularly: “Look, Daddy, there’s a man with one arm.” But I’ve got used to it. I do miss my arm – anyone would. Even five years on, I still get phantom pain, all day, every day. Some days, it’s really bad, right down to where my wrist was. They say it’s the nerves. I could have an operation to reroute some of them to other parts of my body, but it would mean cutting my arm open again where the scar is, and another six months of recuperating. I’ve had enough of hospitals.
• As told to Sophie Haydock
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