Hi, my name is Jemima and I am on a long journey from being an event rider to now a para dressage rider after a life changing accident. I have Kindly been asked to write monthly about my progress and some of the madness that I get up to.

So a little introduction to myself and the incredible team that are helping me with my journey. I have been riding since I was 2 years old but mainly charging around Exmoor and managing to attend pony club camp once a year due to being at boarding school. I always knew that horses were going to be a huge part of my life so I made the decision to attend college and pursue my career with horses. After years of hard work and lots of frustrations I ended up with my dream job as head girl and second rider for a top 4* eventer. It was an incredible experience as I was helping produce young horses and taking them round their first events as well as competing my own and owners horses. Watching the horses come up the levels and being involved in the sport was brilliant and I still miss it everyday.

Where did it all go wrong? Late 2014 I became very ill with my thyroid which meant surgery and therefore I had to leave my job as I was suffering terribly with many symptoms. Finally thinking that was all over and I was getting back to normal I was involved in a horrific car accident in May 2015. My friends and I were on our way out for the evening when a van travelling in the opposite direction decided to overtake last minute and went straight head on into our car. I can’t tell you much more from the accident as thankfully I don’t really have any memories from it but it caused huge amounts of damage to everyone involved and sadly 2 people lost their lives.

I was resuscitated at the scene by another motorist who turned out to be a retired trauma surgeon turned reverent. I don’t think I could have been any luckier. I was rushed for emergency surgery that night and over the next couple of days and another emergency surgery my family were told I had a 5% charge of survival. It is very frightening to think how close I came to losing my life but it gives me something to look back on and see how far I have come.

When I was bought out of coma apparently one of the first things I said was ‘oh well it will have to be the Paralympics now’. I have no memory of this and at this point I hadn’t even been told about my injuries but deep down I must have known that I was badly damaged.

The reason I am now a para rider is that I have a complete spinal cord injury at the level of T10. This is at my waist area, therefore I have little- no feeling and movement from the waist down leaving me paraplegic. I say little as I have a slight bit of feeling on my right hand side to the top of my thigh. I fractured my L2 vertebrae so I have 2 rods and 10 pins In my spine. I also suffered from horrendous abdominal injuries and even had a tear in my aorta so I am very lucky. Even now 3 years down the line I have just recovered from more abdominal surgery from the seatbelt damage.

I was determined to get back riding even though I was told not to, but who is going to stop us horsey lot! I spent in total 9 weeks in ICU then only 6 weeks in spinal rehab as I knew I needed to get out of there as the biggest challenge for me was how to deal with life on the outside. As soon as I had my last surgery in 2015 I was planning to get back on so did this in January 2016, 8 months after the accident. My god that was a shock to the system. I knew it was going to be hard work but the fact that I couldn’t even let go of the front of the saddle was a surprise. I had zero balance and it was scary, it did make me question if this was something I would ever do again to the standard that I want.

I have such a support network in my friends and family who have helped hugely through this whole process and now I have built an incredible rehab team who not only challenge me but I challenge them sometimes with the crazy requests I ask for(squatting being the latest) Having a little break from the rehab this week as I am off to Mexico with one of my best friends this week so I’m sure we will come back with some stories then it’s back to work we go!

So I hope everyone will enjoy or find interesting the progress in my riding and rehab, next time I will tell you a bit about my gorgeous horses and what it was like getting back to my first para event and not to forget my two crazy para poodles Blossom and Bluebell!