"You can unleash the potential you’ve got whether you’re disabled or not."
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Annie cared for daughter Emma in the aftermath of a mystery virus that affected her limbs. Emma went on to become one of Britain’s most successful Paralympians.

My object: Emma’s gap-year rucksack

‘The object is a rucksack. This was a rucksack that was going to have to be good enough to get Emma and all the kit she might need on the greatest adventure of her life after she left school at18. It was the biggest rucksack we thought a little person could carry. I can’t give you the weight, but it had to be able to hold enough stuff to get to Australia and travel around the country in her gap year. It was bulging from every possible strap. It was never, ever going to be big enough, but she packed it with what she thought she’d need.

Emma was based in the first instance with a family she was going to be working for on their farm by way of contributing to her stay. She spent some very happy days exploring lovely parts of the coast of Australia and up where they lived in theBlue Mountains. She was having a fine time. Then, unfortunately, she became unwell quite suddenly and had to be hospitalised. I was called and they asked if I could possibly go out there. They thought it was necessary.

It was an illness that was never defined in concrete terms. They think it was probably viral, but they weren’t sure. It could possibly have been an insect bite or a spider bite, we don’t know, there was never a firm diagnosis. She experienced a lot of problems with both of her upper limbs and lower limbs initially and then happily subsequently the upper limbs recovered.But her legs never really got back to full-functional use.

I didn’t really feel I was a carer, not in my understanding of what the word means. I just felt I was a mum helping pick up the pieces, get her going again. But now, of course, I can see that I was having to be a carer for her for a while. In a way, I didn’t think of myself as a typical carer because it didn’t stop me going anywhere or doing anything. I’ve not been involved that much apart from the acute episodes.

She was able to walk around, but slowly and what I, as career physiotherapist, would say was a ‘very hampered gait’. While she was at schoolteaching there came up some opportunities to explore disability sport. A friend encouraged her to go to the trials that the British Paralympic Association put on to see if people with disability can be successful. And she was successful. She elected to join the squad for the volleyball. We were heading towards 2012 at that point and a home Olympics and Paralympics, so that was a big goal and a huge step along the way to realising she was not really needing care anymore.

When she was at university, she discovered that on a Wednesday afternoon there was a canoeing club. She found that if she got down there early and got into her canoe, kayak rather, before all the others came, she suddenly wasn’t somebody who was needing help. She could paddle independently because her upper limbs had recovered.

She became a full-time athlete. I’m incredibly proud of her [Emma has won gold medals in canoeing at three successive Paralympics]. I see one of her driving forces is speaking to people and explaining that you may have bits of you that don’t work, but there are bits of you that do. You can unleash the potential you’ve got whether you are disabled or not.It is unlocking that feeling that you can achieve, you can do more, valuing yourself.’

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