My journey from neurosurgery to sport

Who am i?

I am mostly known for my sport, the days spent training, chasing a ball around a football pitch or throwing myself around a netball court. But there is a bit more to it than that!

I have Spinabifida, which is a neurological condition that develops early on in pregnancy. Nowadays, it is (normally) found on the 12 week ultrasound, but my parents didn’t know about it until the day I was born.

My Spinabifida is incredibly rare, lipomyelomeningocele, where my spinal cord was outside of my body surrounded by a sack of spinal fluid. It is not the most serious form, but it required major spinal surgery when I was 8 month old to correct.

NHS – Spinabifida

In March 2008, I had that surgery. My surgeons told my parents to prepare for the possibility that I’d never walk, but a week later, I pulled myself up in my cot for the first time and after that I took my first steps.

Post Surgery

From that moment on, there was no stopping me! I won gold in gymnastics when I was 4 years old and was being trained to play performance tennis at my local tennis club. Tennis took over eventually, but unfortunately, I only played until I was 9 years old.

I started missing the same milestones as my peers were hitting, and therefore started falling behind in my performance. My parents contacted my consultant, who started investigating, and we were prepared for me to have exploratory surgery, which didn’t end up happening in the end. That was when we learned that I am missing something that essentially means that I will always be a step behind my teammates when it comes to strength.

I left tennis, and for some reason never went back. But I started playing netball at school, went along to a few external summer camps, where I was asked to join and developed for 2 years before I started to fall behind again.

Like before, they investigated but couldn’t find anything, so they wanted to perform exploratory surgery again. But again, my parents decided not to, the risks outweighed the benefits.

I took a year out that year, which just so happened to be the year I moved from middle school to high school, so I had a natural way back in, which I took, and in 2023-24, I represented my college alongside a bunch of incredible athletes and now play in the football academy after an incredible season for Worthing Town FC!