Baby Steps our life-changing interview on BBC radio 4
How Jason and Liz met
On Australia day in January 2006, Jason was in Sydney for 24 hours on his way back to work at Canterbury University in New Zealand. Liz was on a round -the-world trip after a cancer scare the year before. That afternoon they were both walking in the Botanic Gardens. Liz was smiling to herself – it was raining, and she was imagining being back home in Donegal. As they walked past each other, Jason wondered if Liz could be smiling at him and she looked a bit lost, so he asked if he could show her the way to the Opera House. They soon got talking, and when Jason found out Liz’s next stop would be Christchurch, he offered to pick her up at the airport.
When she arrived in New Zealand, Jason took Liz to all his favourite places in the South Island. They soon realized that they wanted to be together for the rest of their lives.
By the end of that year, Liz was three months pregnant. Just two weeks short of their first anniversary, Jason was kitesurfing when he had a terrible accident. A gust of wind picked him up and threw him head first onto the sand. He suffered a severe traumatic brain injury and without the rapid response of the North West Air Ambulance Jason could have died on the beach
Two weeks later, on the day of their first anniversary, Liz was told “if he doesn’t wake up from being in a coma today, he will never wake up”.
The next year in hospital was a rollercoaster ride. There was a peak when their son Jack was born in the same hospital, six months after Jason’s accident.
There were many troughs in Jason’s journey to recovery. He fell while in hospital and suffered another brain injury, among other medical emergencies. At times it seemed that there was no hope of any meaningful recovery.
Two years later when he was leaving hospital, Jason still did not have his sitting balance. The physios said he would never walk again. At that time Jack was just beginning to stand and taking his first steps. He became Jason’s inspiration to start walking. Over the next six months, they learnt to walk together. That meant Jason could meet his first goal, to walk down the aisle at their wedding, in fact he jogged!
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Once he was walking, Jason realized that the crisis he had had in his life didn’t have to be the catastrophe that the physios had predicted. It could be a catalyst to do bigger and better things.
Six years after leaving hospital, Jason went back to the consultant who had told him he would never walk again and to his astonishment, asked him for sponsorship for a triathlon. Liz and Jason did Skipton Triathlon together.
Jason’s determination helped him to make an unprecedented recovery. Ten years after his accident, Jack crossed the finish line with him when he ran Dublin marathon.
