A traumatic brain injury left Dawn Needle paralysed. After learning to walk again, she has been given an adult education award. James Burton reports.
SHE has no recollection of the moment her life changed forever but every day, Dawn Needle lives with its consequences.
Dawn suffered a massive brain injury and lay unconscious in her house for eight days. When she awoke, she was paralyzed from the neck down.
But after months of learning to walk, cook and eat again, Dawn now has a part-time job and has seen her achievements honoured with an adult education award.
The 55-year-old former nurse was in her bathroom when it happened.
"They think I was unconscious on the floor for about eight days because I had daily newspapers delivered and there were eight newspapers on the doorstep," she said.
My sister Linda came over and, in those days, I used to have a chain on the door.
"It was across so she knew I was in and she thought she was going to find me there dead."
Dawn's distraught sister went to fetch the neighbours.
They found her slumped on the floor between the bath and the wall.
An ambulance rushed Dawn to Hull Royal Infirmary and doctors battled to save her life.
They nearly lost her three times.
"I found out afterwards I had a massive bleed in hospital and Linda said she thought I was going to die," said Dawn.
"I had to have 13 units of blood. I was bleeding into the abdomen."
Doctors realised as well as her brain injury, Dawn had a duodenal ulcer which had ruptured.
She pulled through but then went into respiratory arrest and had to be brought back to life with a defibrillator after a tracheotomy.
"I then had to have renal dialysis, because I went into renal failure," said Dawn.
"That was the third time they told my family I might die."
Dawn does not remember anything for about six months.
She was first fully conscious after being moved to a rehabilitation unit at Castle Hill Hospital in Cottingham.
The big challenge then was getting used to a body she barely knew.
"My family were told I would probably be in a wheelchair and I might be brain damaged," Dawn said.
"When I woke up I was paralysed from the neck down – the only thing I could move was my head.
"The only way I can describe it now is that my brain is full of boxes – I think everybody's is.
"Some give you talent or sporting ability and at least half or three-quarters of mine got wiped out.
"The thing is, they don't come back."
Dawn started in a wheelchair but gradually learnt to walk again as the feeling came back in her body.
It was hard to motivate herself at first.
"One day I was feeling a bit ratty and one of the nurses came in and asked me to do some- thing," she said. "I said I wasn't going to do it.
"She said it was up to me and if I wanted to get better they would help me, but they had a ward full of patients like me and they all needed help."
Her words gave Dawn a new sense of determination.
She was determined to get better.
"I had a think about it and thought I'd better pull my socks up," she said.
"It was petrifying, being paralysed. There was a fear that was how I was always going to be."
It wasn't just walking Dawn had to learn again.
She had forgotten how to do the simplest of tasks.
"What I've found, which is fantastic, is it takes me time to learn things but I can relearn skills and they stay in my brain," she said. "I don't forget them.
"I learnt to cook again and how to manage money.
"I started with life skills and then I started to get bored."
Dawn desperately wanted to get back into the workplace but could not find a company willing to take her on.
So she turned to the Hull Adult Education centre in Preston Road, east Hull.
"I got on a computer course and passed it," she said. "The people at the college asked if I wanted to go any further and I said yes so I'm now doing a more advanced course."
The training led to a job.
Dawn volunteers as an administrator and receptionist at a Citizens Advice Bureau.
She works there for eight hours a week.
"It's fantastic," she said. "I absolutely love it.
"It was so marvellous to get back into the workplace, to have colleagues again and a purpose for getting up and going out.
"I thoroughly enjoy it."
Dawn's achievements were honoured with a prize at the Yorkshire and Humber Adult Learners' Awards.
Her prize was for getting further than anyone thought she would.
"For some reason it wasn't my time to go," she said.
"Every morning I wake up and think, 'Wow, I'm still here'.
"I just want to make people in my situation think they can give it a go, too."
