For years, my life revolved around a whirlwind of activity. Despite constant advice to slow down, I continued racing from one deadline to the next, always assuring my family that after the next month, I’d ease up. But that day never came, and it seems fate decided to intervene on my behalf. It was a typical Friday evening in early January 2025 when everything changed. After a quick stop at the store to pick up a few items—which inevitably turned into more than planned—I was heading to my car when I tripped.

It wasn’t just a stumble; I tripped over an abandoned pallet and, burdened by three hefty shopping bags, landed awkwardly on my tailbone. In that instant, my life was turned upside down with a devastating back injury.

The pain was indescribable, leaving me immobilized. My husband and an ambulance were summoned as I lay on the wet pavement, tears mingling with the rain, while my daughter tried to console me. Despite receiving pain relief injections and anesthetic vapors, nothing seemed to alleviate the agony.

MEDICATION

My husband held my hand during the entire ambulance ride to the hospital, as I wept uncontrollably. Compared to this, even childbirth would have seemed like a relief. At the hospital, I found myself lying flat on my back in the emergency ward for three days, waiting for a bed. I remained in the same clothes from the accident, without food or water, and without a sponge bath, as the staff anticipated my transfer to a ward imminently.

The medication was potent, mercifully blurring those difficult days, though I vividly recall my husband’s heated exchanges with the doctors, trying to expedite my move from the emergency ward. Due to shock, my bladder had ceased functioning, necessitating catheterization. The nurses were exhausted, the air-conditioning had failed, and the small fan my family brought provided little relief from the oppressive heat.

Compounding the situation, we had planned to move my daughter to London on a two-month trip just five days later. Our plans were abruptly canceled, and my daughter postponed her relocation to stay by my side.

PAIN IS LONELY

The fear on my kids’ faces as they sat by my bedside broke my heart. My wonderful staff were doing damage control, frantically cancelling my work schedule for the entire year. Life as I knew it had stopped dead. I kept thinking, “This can’t be real, it’s just a nightmare. When I wake up it will be over.” But of course it wasn’t. I had broken my L3 vertebrae, cracked L2 and L4, and suffered a 55% compaction on L2, L3 and L4. No mean feat for an accidental fall outside a shop.

For a usually very positive person I was in a world of “poor me”. I remember lying in that hospital bed after they kicked my family out each night, staring up at the ceiling with hot salty tears running into my ears.

Pain is lonely. Silent. An aching gnaw on sanity. Nobody can take it from you, the drugs appease it, of course, but along with that you lose your sense of self, in and out of a daze, sick to the stomach, numbed and cold. When you are in the depths of hell, it’s hard to imagine how you will ever climb out. Finally, I was transferred to one of four beds in a room.

There was a woman in her late 90s in the last days of her life, a man beside me who was blind and another elderly woman. I remember the exact moment when I was jolted out of my pity party for one.

STOIC AND BRAVE

It was late at night. The man in the bed beside me was crying and calling out for his deceased wife. The beautiful old woman who was in her very late 90s in the bed across from me had her granddaughters come to visit to say goodbye.

She was being transferred to her own room as she wasn’t expected to live for much longer, her time on our earth was running out. As they reminisced and laughed softly at stories about old times, I wept in silence. She wasn’t sad or scared, she was stoic and brave. They left and the old man beside me was finally given a sedative to sleep, and then it was just me and her, alone in the darkened room. I was trying to be discreet and wipe my eyes without her seeing and she looked over at me and said: “Don’t be sad for me dear. I had a wonderful life because that’s what I chose. Life is what you make it.”

I forced a smile and we talked a little more. When the nurses came to take her away, I knew it was the last time I was going to see her alive. I watched through tears as she was wheeled away and at that moment I decided: enough was enough. I wasn’t going to feel sorry for myself for a second longer.

Yes, I broke my back and life looked different now, but so what. Build a bridge and get over it. Nobody was coming to rescue me, I’d been lying here for a week waiting for a hero, but in this instance I needed to step up and be my own hero. I had to make the best of what I had.

For the first time since the accident I slept well. Not because my condition had changed… but because I knew I was going to be OK. I had decided that whatever the future held for me, I was going to make it through to the other side.

I was transferred to a rehabilitation hospital and the care I received was nothing short of incredible. My bladder took two weeks to start working again and, with my optimism in full swing, I started feeling a little stronger every day. I spent a month in hospital, and four months in bed at home. My husband, family and work family were beyond amazing. I shuffled around like a 99-year-old and I couldn’t sit in a chair for six months.

STRONGER

So I concentrated on the things I could control. I ate a low inflammation diet and sat in the sun every day, swam and focused on being optimistic. I did everything I physically could to try and heal my broken body. And then just as I was starting to recover and could get out of bed by lifting myself out on my elbow, I tore the rotator cuff in my shoulder… Are you kidding me?

But guess what? I survived and not just survived, I thrived. Gratitude is a wonderful thing and for anyone who is going through a dark time in their life I urge you to try and look for the silver linings because there are many.

In every corner of every dark room there is a spark of light. You just have to trust that you will find it. It’s been 10 months since my accident, I can move without pain… most days. I can work a few hours a day now, and the nonsense that I used to believe would bring me happiness is a distant memory.

I don’t need to slow down, I’m speeding up because if I’ve learnt anything it’s that I’m stronger than I think I am. I am 54 now, a mother-of-three, and I love working, I love being busy and I love the thrill of the chase, and more than anything, I love writing books. The best is yet to come. Health and happiness is worth fighting for, even if who you are fighting is yourself.

I’m quite sure that positivity heals way more people than medicine ever did. I sometimes think of that little old lady and I think she’s smiling down at me from heaven and she was right. Life is what you make it.

• T L Swan is a #1 Amazon bestselling author based in Sydney, Australia. Her latest series, The Miles High Club, consisting of five books, The Stopover, The Takeover, The Casanova, The Do-Over and Miles Ever After, is out in paperback, £8.99 each