'Failure is not an option. I WILL walk again': The inspiring paratrooper injured in Afghanistan who wants to dance on Strictly Come Dancing.
One of the most extra¬ordinary things about paratrooper Ben Parkinson - and there are many - is that his sense of humour remains intact.
While the Taliban blew away his legs, scrambled his brain and shattered pretty much every aspect of his life, they somehow failed to destroy the thing you might imagine would be first to go in such -circumstances - the desire to see the funny side, in everything.
We’ve been talking (painstakingly, granted, given that he all but lost the power of speech in that landmine blast in 2006) about his plans for the future. Some of the chat has been grim, ¬conducted as he lies marooned on the chiropractor’s couch, and revolving around the mechanics of prosthetic limbs.
Ready for anything: Paratrooper Ben Parkinson is living proof of the regiment's motto after suffering horrific injuries in Afghanistan
Then, out of nowhere, the guffaws start. His treatment today has required the removal of his shorts, and his chiropractor has made a quip about Ben’s penchant for lurid underpants. Today’s are lime green. ‘But you should see his pink ones,’ he grimaces. Ben rocks with laughter.
A few minutes later, he’s back in his wheelchair, giving as good as he gets. He’s talking about his wish to take part in Strictly Come Dancing, ¬wearing a ‘sparkly tutu’. Then he waves his ‘good’ arm aloft. ‘Whatever happens, I’d be better than Ann Widdecombe,’ he quips.
He’s serious about the Strictly thing. I say they’ve never had anyone in a wheelchair before, and he motions to the prosthetic legs standing on their own in the middle of the room.
‘No wheelchair. Proper dancing - on legs. And I’ll win it, too. Watch me.’
He then fetches a DVD of a recent skiing holiday, and watches himself hurtling down the slopes in Colorado with as much exhilaration as he must have felt on the day.
'I have to work to get ¬better. Every day. I’m not a quitter.’
Kayaking provided a similar sense of ‘freedom and fun’, he tells me. ‘I’m going to do a bobsleigh run soon,’ he adds. His mother, Diane, covers her eyes in mock horror. He just laughs. ‘What’s the worst that can happen?’
He has less gung-ho targets in his sights, too. This year, his brother is getting married. He is best man and has vowed to make a speech. At the moment that seems as unlikely as him pulling off a perfect pirouette.
Although he is rightly proud of being able to communicate at all, the recovery of his voice is in the early stages, and most sentences have to be translated by his mother. But you’d be mad to write him off.
‘I don’t do “ifs”,’ he says, straining to enunciate each word. ‘Failure. Is. Not. An. Option. I WILL walk. I WILL run.
‘I’m not disabled. This is a temporary thing. I don’t hate being in this chair, because it won’t be for ever. It’s just until I get better.’
Surely, even he must have days when he simply wants to pull the duvet over his head and stay in bed?
He shakes his head. ‘Never. What would be the point of that? I have to work to get ¬better. Every day. I’m not a quitter.’
Those who know Ben have spent the past four years watching his progress, inch by ¬tortuous inch, with a mix of awe and ¬incredulity. This is the former gunner whose terrible claim to fame was that he was the most grievously injured soldier to return from Afghanistan - or any site of modern combat - alive.
He suffered 37 separate injuries, including the loss of both legs, and a broken back, hips and ribs. Potentially more serious was the fact that when he was hurled from his vehicle after a landmine attack, his head took much of the impact.
Horrific: Ben Parkinson suffered a total of 37 terrible injuries when he was blown up by a landmine in 2006
Diane recalls how naïve the family were in the early days ‘worrying about a little thing like losing his legs’.
‘With hindsight, that was just a flesh wound,’ she points out. ‘It was the fact he had a hammock under his chin, to catch the fluid leaking from his brain, that should have been the big concern. In a way, it’s best we didn’t appreciate that, then.’
When the scale of Ben’s injuries became apparent, his prognosis was grim. Doctors told his family he would never walk or talk again. At the age of 22, he was ‘written off’, says Diane, bitterly.
‘We were led to believe he would never have a meaningful life. I’m not sure where Ben would be today if we’d listened to them. In a home, most likely, slumped in front of a TV.’
All of which makes the sight of him hurtling down a mountainside simply unbelievable. ¬Somehow, watching his more mundane progress across the living room floor — teeth gritted, leaning heavily on a frame, pausing to drink water from a straw — is even more inspiring.
What must those who wrote Ben off think when they observe his progress, I ask.
‘Probably absolutely horrified,’ says his stepfather Andy. ‘What Ben has done has implications for every amputee who returns from war. I’m not sure his message is one the ¬powers-that-be want to hear. I think it would be easier for them if we hadn’t bothered trying to get Ben back on his feet.’
He’s angry, but you can see why. Ben has defied every prediction through his own sheer will and the support of a family who have never been prepared to accept the status quo.
Their most public battle was over compensation. When Ben was originally offered a derisory £152,000, they went public with their disgust and, with the help of a Daily Mail campaign, the figure was upped, eventually to £580,000.
There have been smaller battles pretty much every day. He only received a crucial operation to straighten his spine - without which walking and talking would have been impossible - because Diane insisted on it.
Every piece of equipment for Ben’s home gym seems to have been the subject of a flurry of letters between them and the MoD, with the NHS (the body responsible for providing his care) and its endless bureaucrats, muddling the mix.
‘The pattern is that we ask for ¬something, and everyone tries to come up with reasons to say no,’ explains Andy. ‘It sounds twee to describe it as a battle, after what Ben has been through, but it is. We’ve fought them every step of the way.’
Never give up: Ben Parkinson has showed tremendous courage since having his legs blown off while serving his country in Afghanistan
Some would argue that Ben is one of the lucky ones. His regular physio sessions with Robert ‘Shep’ Shepherd, a private physiotherapist, are paid for by the MoD, following yet another fight by his parents. Dr Aidan Robinson, the chiropractor who comes in to assist, provides his services free.
They make a formidable team. While I am there, Shep notices a muscle in Ben’s inner thigh is ¬pulling the wrong way. Aiden instantly steps in, does some manipulation, and ¬corrects it.
‘Now that’s a perfect example of why Ben’s progress has been so good. If his parents had been more accepting, Ben would have had his physio on the NHS. That little niggle would have taken three weeks to sort out,’ says Shep.
Still, some of Ben’s own doctors think he is being pushed too hard. Shep says he recently got an email from one consultant telling him Ben was fatigued.
‘I beg to differ. This is a man who needs, begs, lives to be pushed. Every day we see the results.’
There is talk about Ben’s vest - a compression garment favoured by sportsmen for its ability to ‘help’ the muscles along. They cost £60, yet the family believe they’ve improved Ben’s performance so much they are vital.
The MoD disagrees, and refuses to pay. Ditto a £1,000 rowing machine in his home gym.
'He’s not on any medication. Barring disease, he could live well into his 80s, maybe longer.’
The cost of rehabilitating men like Ben is huge. Just off his bedroom is a wheelchair-accessible bathroom, ¬provided at great expense. His physio thinks Ben could manage his daily shower himself, if he had waterproof prosthetic legs.
There is already a question of who will pay for the £30,000 computerised C-Legs Shep has recommended as the next step. Will waterproof ones be funded from the public purse, too?
‘Possibly not. That will be another fight,’ says Shep. ‘But our goal here is to get Ben truly independent. I would argue they are essential.’
Andy points out that while the costs are jaw-dropping, the costs of not providing such things will be even greater.
‘If we don’t get Ben rehabilitated, he will need 24-hour care for the rest of his life. He’s a young man, fitter than any of us. He’s not on any medication. Barring disease, he could live well into his 80s, maybe longer.’
At the moment there is no issue with Ben’s care, thanks to his parents. They are anxious, however. The safety net holding this whole process together is the British Army.
Diane is terrified that net will fail. When Ben was first injured, they were assured he would be looked after for the rest of his life by his Army ‘family’. Now that seems less certain.
‘Back then, Ben was the first and the worst injured. Now there are so many more like him. The goalposts have moved,’ she says.
Fighter: Ben, pictured with mum Diane, dad Steve and an army officer, has defied all the odds after being blown up in Afghanistan - following the horrific incident doctors didn't think he would survive
Even a few months ago, there was talk about how he hoped to get back to work with his Regiment, albeit in a computer-based job, for a few days a month to start with. That may no longer be the case.
‘We are quite disappointed,’ says Diane. ‘We were told they’d create a job for him, but when we talked to Army personnel, it emerged that there would be a job - but only if Ben could meet normal duties like patrol every morning. There’s no way he could do that. Our big worry now is that the Army will discharge him. God knows where we will be then.’
She talks like a woman in a race against time.
‘That’s exactly what it is. I feel like we are waiting for everything to be pulled away from us. I am 52. I won’t be around to care for Ben for ever. I’m desperately worried.’
The fate of injured soldiers who find themselves on Civvy Street was this week announced as the subject of a Government inquiry.
There have long been accusations that, while the care provided at Headley Court, the military rehabilitation centre, is exemplary, those soldiers who are medically discharged have a very different experience.
‘The problem is that so many young lads are coming home with double, sometimes triple amputations now,’ says Diane. ‘We were lucky in a way, that Ben was pretty unique. Now he is not. The Army might have been able to keep a handful of lads like him in, but hundreds?’
Graphic: Ben sustained grievous damage to his spine, skull, pelvis, hands, spleen and ribcage, leaving him in a coma for months
There is more than money at stake here. Ben still lives and breathes the Army, and ‘yanking it from him’, as Diane puts it, would be worse than taking his legs or his memory.
Amputees get to choose the colour of the sockets of their prosthetic legs. Most go for flesh coloured, or black. Ben opted for maroon - the colour of the famous Para beret.
I ask him if he sees much of his former colleagues, and he corrects me. ‘They are not ex-colleagues. They are colleagues. Brothers, actually.’
He feels only love for the Army, despite everything. He looks ¬genuinely baffled when I press him on his lack of bitterness or anger. ‘Why would I be angry? The Army saved my life.’
Would he join up again? ‘Tomorrow,’ he says. ‘I’d do it all again, exactly the same.’
He talks of how lucky it was that it was he - the man-mountain who stood 6ft 5in before the blast - took most of the force.
‘If it had been one of the other lads, they might have died.’
I ask if he’s ever wished he had died in that explosion, and he says, yes - once. ‘When that doctor said I’d never do anything. He was wrong, but he made me waver. Now I’ve shown him. And I wouldn’t like to be him if I see him again.’
Ben’s stoicism is remarkable. ‘Suck it up,’ they say in the Army. And he does. Every day.
Diane and Steve have lost so much, too. The pair had good jobs, but both had to be sacrificed because caring for Ben is a full-time occupation. Diane explains: ‘We’d been planning to retire to Scotland. We thought we were easing off in life, with our children grown up.
‘With one knock at the door, all that changed. We don’t live in our own house any more. We’ve moved in to care for Ben.
‘It has been hard - the worry, the struggle, the sitting up into the wee small hours writing ten-page letters to Prime Ministers. But who else will fight for Ben?’
Diane, 52, and a mother of four, admits she has come much closer to
giving up than her son has. She collapsed when the news was broken to her that Ben was so terribly injured.
For months she sat by his bed, trying to find an inch on his body that wasn’t bloodied and battered, to kiss. It nearly broke her.
‘We had some terrible times. In that first six months I thought that to ¬finish it for both of us would’ve been the kindest way. Then one day, Ben squeezed my hand, and it all changed. We had hope.’
She is desperately proud of her son. What does she think of the Army itself?
Presumably she rues the day her boy ever signed up?
‘That’s such a hard one. Part of me wishes he’d never done it, but I think Ben was born a soldier, and even I wouldn’t want to take those years away from him. The Army transformed him, took this well-meaning, but aimless young lad and made him a man. It gave him a purpose in life, which he has to this day.’
As is so often the case in houses like this, no one actually uses the word ‘brave’. I ask Ben what he makes of the fact the adjective is constantly applied to him by strangers. He shakes that big head again.
‘Bravery is risking your life for others. I’m not doing this for anyone else — not you, not my mum, not my physio. I’m doing this for me.’
What other word can you use but brave, though?
‘Bloody-minded’ - his suggestion - simply isn’t enough.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1345587/Failure-option-I-WILL-walk-The-inspiring-paratrooper-injured-Afghanistan-wants-dance-STRICTLY.html#ixzz1Ad9jrjKs
