Posted on August 22, 2025

Surviving the rupture changed everything — now I live in a body I barely recognise, searching for meaning in the wreckage.

The doctors didn’t expect me to survive my subarachnoid haemorrhage. Some days, I wish I hadn’t.

At 36, I was a fit, strong infantry soldier. At 50, I woke blind in one eye, unable to walk, with more than 14 years of my life erased. Survival didn’t mean carrying on with life as it was. It meant waking into a stranger’s body, holding memories that don’t feel like mine, and living with pain that never lets up.

The Hole in My Timeline

I don’t remember getting married. I don’t remember my children being born. These are the moments most fathers carry as treasures — and for me, they are emptiness.

I look at wedding photos and see a stranger in my place. I hear stories of my children’s milestones and can’t recall a second of them. For me, those memories don’t exist.

People pressured me: “Do you remember this? Do you remember that?” as if badgering me could somehow unlock hidden memories. But there are no hidden memories. They’re gone. Burned away.

The only memories I do have are from combat. And they terrify me. They don’t feel like my own. They sit in my mind like a film I half-watched — familiar, but without the emotional attachment that makes a memory feel lived. I look at them and think: How could anyone do that? What was I like then? But I can’t connect to the man who went to war. He feels like someone else.

Becoming Dusty

Even my own name stopped feeling like mine. People used it, but I didn’t respond. It belonged to a man I didn’t recognise anymore.

“Dusty” came from a cleaner on the hospital ward. I’d been in bed so long he joked I was gathering dust. It made me laugh at a time when there was little to laugh about. The name stuck. Over time, it felt more mine than the name I was born with. Because Dusty isn’t a ghost of the man I used to be — Dusty is the man who survived.

My brain changed in other ways too. Before the rupture, I hated DIY. I didn’t own a single tool. After the injury, I couldn’t get enough. I started buying tools, fixing and building from my wheelchair. It was as if my brain, knowing my world would shrink, gave me a new interest to fill the space. What once bored me now became a purpose.

The rupture didn’t just change my interests — it rewired who I am.

It also stripped away my filters. What I think, I say. Outbursts come quick and hard. Anger erupts like fire, expletives spit out of me like punctuation.

I’m not proud of it. I’ve worked with psychiatrists and neuropsychologists, tried to build coping strategies. Some days they work. Other days, my memory gaps mean they vanish right when I need them most. It’s not a matter of willpower; it’s an injury. When the parts of your brain that hold the brakes are damaged, no amount of effort can always stop the crash.

My Life Now: Pain and Purpose

Add tremors, impaired speech, hearing loss, seizures, PTSD — and social interaction becomes exhausting, unsafe, and humiliating. I’ve withdrawn. My circle is small, and beyond that, I stay quiet.

Survival came with agony. Not occasional pain, but constant, unrelenting agony. Four different medications fail to touch it. I live with crippling headaches, nerve pain that burns like fire, and muscle spasms so violent they leave my body black and blue. The pain never stops. Only the severity shifts.

If I left a dog to suffer like this, I’d be prosecuted. Yet here I am, left in pain that the NHS writes off as something to “cope with”. The pain clinic’s best offer was mindfulness classes.

With respect, the Buddha himself couldn’t “mindfulness” this level of pain away.

This isn’t tension you can breathe through. It’s neurological misfiring, spasms tearing your muscles, blood vessels screaming. When the system offers nothing but classes instead of treatment, it’s not care. It’s neglect.

And yet, I find meaning where I can. Two things keep me anchored: my blog and my garden.

The blog is my voice. I use talk-to-text to get words out raw, then edit them into something I can share with the world. Analytics tell me people are reading. Even when comments are few, those numbers matter. They tell me: I am heard. I am still part of the world, even if it feels like I’m watching life from the outside.

The garden is my retreat. Pots and hanging baskets are at a height I can reach from my chair. Bursts of colour and life in a space where nothing is demanded of me. Flowers don’t ask me to remember things I’ve forgotten. They don’t expect me to be the man I was. They just grow, silently, where I place them. The act of tending them brings calm. It gives me a place where I’m not a patient or a problem. I’m just Dusty, in my garden, making something alive and beautiful.

Nat — My Rock, My Partner

Through all of this, my wife, Nat, has been my rock. Fierce in her defence of me. Decisive and unflinching when advocating. She goes to war for me in the world outside. At home, she is gentle, loving, and deeply understanding — even though I know the frustration must weigh on her too. Not frustration at me, but at our situation.

Her humour has kept us both afloat. Like the time we went shopping for trainers. I’d found a pair I liked, but they were out of my reach. She picked one up and said, “You go find a seat and I’ll—” before stopping herself, realising I was already sitting in my chair. We both burst into uncontrollable laughter.

Moments like that mean everything. They remind me I’m not just a man in a wheelchair or a survivor of a rupture. I’m still her husband. Still her partner. Still someone she can laugh with until tears run down our faces.

Without Nat, I’d be lost. She is my motivation to dig deeper, to try harder, and to build some kind of life against the odds.

Against the Odds

The pain and memory loss are brutal enough. But what makes it worse is the system’s abandonment. Rehabilitation services turned me away as “too complex”. Pain clinics offered mindfulness instead of treatment.

I only discovered the details of my surgery because a kind occupational therapist took the time to explain it. The doctors had gone in through an artery in my groin, threaded instruments all the way into my brain, and sealed the aneurysm from the inside. Life-saving, yes. But no one had thought to explain what was done to me until that OT did.

That’s the part people don’t see. Not just the pain or the disability — but the way services quietly wash their hands of you once you don’t fit their neat recovery boxes.

I won’t pretend. Most days, life feels like hell. Pain without relief. Memories that don’t return. A body I don’t recognise. A system that looks the other way.

I am not the soldier I remember being.
But I am still fighting.

If you’ve also faced a life-changing challenge, I’d like to hear how you found your fight. Please feel free to share your story in the comments below.