There is always light at the end of the tunnel...

Welcome to this week's Ask Charlie. I hadn't planned to film this for this week for you, but actually, I felt that it was relevant, so here we are!

It's quite a long story and I'm going to start at the beginning, but I was chatting to a friend last week whose husband has had a nasty accident and talking a little bit about what I had been through. And she said, "Charlie, please, will you do a blog post about this?". And I thought, yes, at some point I will.

Then I had an incident on Sunday and it's just actually made it relevant, which is why it's coming to you today!

I'm going to try and remember as best I can, the series of events leading up to my leg.

It was 2014, and I'd had not a great September. I'd had impacted wisdom teeth removed, and I then got dry socket, which is really painful. Then I had to have a root canal on the same side of my mouth, the opposite jaw. So that was pretty just irritating and painful, but just the beginning!

I was trying a new horse to buy since my horse had retired. She was just the most incredible gentle soul. She was on loan from a really lovely friend. She was just wonderful, but she was very old, and she was beginning to lose her sight.

Because of my muscle condition, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, I wasn't exercising and I wasn't physically strong, so I could only ride sidesaddle.

When you ride sidesaddle, your pelvis is closed and you use your core stomach muscles. It doesn't affect your lower back. I physically wasn't strong enough to ride astride. When I did, I ended up not being able to feel my feet, which wasn't ideal!

So, I needed a horse that would take a sidesaddle. I'd ridden this horse a few times, but this time he decided that he was going to buck and buck and buck until he could get me off. We were in a big open field, he bolted and was just fly bucking, which is pretty terrifying. I've never fallen off sidesaddle, but I came flying off and shattered my scapula, my shoulder blade on the left side. Now the whole thing happened in a particularly annoying place in the woods, so it was very difficult for the ambulance to come and get me. It took a long time and by the time they arrived I was borderline hypothermia. There were no air ambulances available that day, and a narrow gateway for them to get through to reach me.

So it was quite a performance to get me out! They were treating me like a spinal injury because it was very close to my spine and during recovery, I had to spend 16 weeks with my arm strapped up across the front of my chest.

The children were quite young. I think Gus was three, Coco four, and Archie five, so it was very difficult. But we got through it, we muddled along and it recovered well.

I then decided that it was time to try another horse. With that horse, I needed really to use my seat to ride him and I was still riding sidesaddle. I ended up with two disc bulges in my lower back and having to have steroid injections in my back to recover from that. So it was a difficult time, but, we got over that.

I was getting stronger, I was exercising, so I tried another horse, and I felt it was going to buck. I pulled it up in front of the owner and said, "I feel like this horse is going to buck." And he was like, "No, no, no, no, no. It's never bucked before."

But it did. And I jumped off, twisted my right ankle and shattered my tibial plateaus.

At the time it was very obvious that I had broken my knee. We didn't talk about my ankle. I had surgery a few days later on my knee, and I think it was probably the longest night I have ever had. By now this is pretty much exactly a year after I did the shoulder. The children were a year older, Coco just had her tonsils out a few days before so she needed Mummy, and I wasn't there.

They couldn't come and visit me in the hospital because I think it was on a ward where children weren't allowed to visit, but I was actually in quite a lot of pain. So until they operated, the children didn't come. Sigh was amazing, and luckily my uncle and aunt were up the road and they came and looked after me in those first couple of days because, to be honest, I was a bit of a mess.

So I'd had the surgery on my knee. I remember waking up in recovery like it was yesterday, the pain was just horrific. It was so bad I threw up. I've never thrown up from pain before, but it was really, really excruciating.

They said "well, you've just had a major operation. It is going to be painful." But I knew that there was something else going on. We couldn't get the pain under control, and I was moved to a different hospital in absolute agony and I was taking everything. I said to Sigh that I didn't want the children to come and visit me because I just couldn't get the pain under control.

I could just about hide the pain for FaceTime, taking all the morphine, all the drugs they offered me so I could see the children, but I was in the most excruciating pain and suddenly the penny dropped that it wasn't just the knee. There was something else going on as well.

So I got in touch with the person that had injected my back and also knows about my condition, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. And I sent him an email and he was brilliant, he got straight back in touch and he said to me, it sounds like the operation was probably quite physical and your back has gone again. And God, the relief when I read that email! He copied in the consultant, and then I had a spinal block in my lower back to deal with pain. The pain afterwards was a lot better and more manageable.

However, the recovery process from the knee was not great. It was eight weeks with my leg above my heart for 90% of the day. I had a bed downstairs, a wheelchair, a carer to help me with everything including putting on my knickers. Luckily we've got a wet room downstairs so I had a chair in there to bathe. I had all the disabled equipment to help with daily life. And it was the lowest, lowest point of my life.

I think because I had had the dramas with the teeth, then the shoulder, then the back, and then the leg with the back as well, it was all a little too much.

I was housebound and I felt completely useless. We obviously hadn't had any lockdowns or anything like that so I wasn't used to being housebound and completely incapable of doing anything. And it was lonely. It was scary. It was frightening. I didn't know how I was going to recover from it.

The surgeon was very black and white. He said, "you will never run again. You'll never be able to play tennis. You will need to have a knee replacement. And this is a life-changing injury and I suggest you have therapy."

It was a massive, massive blow. I had a wheelchair, but I was only allowed out of the house in those first couple of months to go to the hospital to see him for appointments. I had a big leg brace on. I had physios that came here that were trying to get movement in it. And then when I was allowed to start weight-bearing, my ankle was really, really, really hurting.

I never really talked to anyone about my ankle. It hurt, but everything hurt!

Anyway, they then x-rayed and did an MRI and realized I had damaged my ankle quite significantly when I had damaged my knee, so that would need operating on at some point too. It was just one blow after another.

I had shed so many tears. I was so emotional and I was so weepy, and I felt for Sigh. He was amazing, but I just needed to be loved and I needed to be cuddled. And he couldn't do that because he was trying to do everything else, poor man! It was really, really difficult.

Mum was still alive, but she was in Germany so she wasn't around to help me, to help me wash, just all those little things that take effort. If you got to the shower and realized you hadn't got something you needed, it would take about an hour to go back and get it. It was just very, very difficult and everything was very slow and very frustrating.

I'd never been so incapacitated. When I damaged my arm, I still had the use of my legs, I had the use of my other arm, I could do stuff, but with the leg, I was pretty laid up for quite a long time.

We had a skiing holiday booked in March (the accident happened in October) and I mentioned it to the consultant. Luckily he was a mad keen skier too and he said, "Do you know what, Charlie? Go. Ski, because you will be able to ski and we're going to operate on your knee when you come back anyway" (unbelievably, I had an allergic reaction to the metal that he'd put in my knee, so he had to operate again to take it out). Plus I was due to have more keyhole and I hadn't yet had the ankle surgery. So he said, "Your ski boot is going to support it all. You're going to be able to ski a billion times better than you can walk. And actually, I think it will do you the world of good."

So I had that to look forward and do you know what? Feeling the wind in my face, I get slightly emotional thinking about it, it was freedom. And it was just incredible being able to do it and not be sat in a world of pain. There pain was there, don't get me wrong, but being there and having that freedom overshadowed that.

I had a knee brace on and I knew that I was being operated on literally two days after we got back, so I couldn't do much damage. I came back and had the knee operated on and had a bit more keyhole surgery as well because I'd damaged the cartilage which he tried to clean up as much as possible. And then I had my ankle operation!

So it was a long journey. It was a year of operations and physio and getting back to normal. I had this wonderful lady, Nanny Rosa, who never minces her words and she said to me, "Charlie Gray, you must walk properly. Stop limping around the place. You must walk properly. Put some books on your head and we are going to walk up and down this kitchen." And she basically taught me to walk again because I was limping and I got used to a limp. Nanny Rosa told me I had to walk properly and do you know what? It was the best thing ever! Slowly, slowly, slowly, and then I started wearing platforms and then I ventured into heels.

The ankle was a bit of a problem with shoes for quite a while, but in time it healed really, very well.

11 months in, I went to see my physio.

She said to me, "Charlie, I'm referring you back to your consultant because I'm not happy with the way your knee is looking. Your whole knee is rotating in." And a few friends had said the same thing to me. Then she said, "I think you need more surgery because your knee is not in the right place, and I'm not happy with it."

It was the worst news. Mum was back from Germany and she said, "Right darling, we're going to find the best knee specialist that we can possibly find, and take you to see him."

I get quite emotional talking about this, but it was the last thing that mum and I did together. We found this incredible knee specialist, Dr Sam Oussedik, and she came with me.

We were with him for three hours and he was so unbelievably thorough. He x-rayed everything. He did MRIs, and he looked at my walk. We did gait analysis, all sorts of things.

He said, "The surgeon that has operated has done a phenomenal job, but this is all stemming from your back, and because your back hasn't recovered properly, your whole leg from your hip is rotating in. So great news. We do not need to operate," which was the best news, and my Mum was dancing out in the corridors with relief.

I had to start really, really working hard with his physio, who is a phenomenal lady. She was so tough. She used to measure my movements every time I went to see her. You know how sometimes physios give you your exercises and you think, "Whatever, I might do a little bit of that," she knew whether I'd been doing them or not and she was very serious with me.

There was no BS with her. It was just very black and white. I went up probably every other week to start with, and then once a month, and then it just got longer and longer. And I now haven't been for ages and ages.

She got me properly working out and properly exercising, which is when I found the Ultimate Shred with Leigh Linton and I started working out with her which completely changed my life.

Those that have seen it on Instagram will know I had a tiny, tiny incident on Sunday.

I was taking the ponies out, and Charlemagne AKA Pony just clipped my ankle bone. The bruising has gone down a lot and I was wearing my Chameau wellies which are old, but brilliant. I didn't even really register that anything had happened at the time!

A couple of minutes later, I realised "Ooh, my ankle hurts a bit." but I still had two stables to muck out which I just did slowly. Then it got more and more painful, but I needed to let the dogs out and take a walk with them.

I came home and took my wellies off, and oh my God I did scream. It was really painful. Sigh I just kept saying, "I don't think it's broken darling, I think it could be all right." But it was really hard to weight bear. I couldn't flex it and it just was getting worse and worse and worse.

As the day went on, I was trying to stay cool, calm and collected rather than go into panic mode of, "oh my goodness, here we go again" and I was just trying to stay sensible, rest it, lift up, elevate, put ice on it. I've got this wonderful homoeopathic arnica, calendula and Urtica lotion which I was putting on religiously as well (you can read more about this lotion in this blog post!).

It got to late afternoon and it was very sore, throbbing and hurting. I couldn't think about anything else. And I thought, do you know what? I think I want to go and have an x-ray because otherwise I'm just not going to sleep. Then Sigh's going to be at work tomorrow and there's absolutely no way I'm going to be able to drive because it's my right foot.

Having had a previous nasty injury on the same spot I was quite apprehensive and I just thought I want to go and get this checked out properly. So I asked Simon to take me to A&E and they were incredible. I was seen so quickly. They agreed I needed an x-ray and the x-ray was clear, just bruising and soft tissue damage. Three days elevate, ice, rest, take painkillers.

I'm not very good at taking painkillers. But this time I've been really good and I've listened to my body over the years. In the past, I've pushed things and thought, "oh, it will be okay". But this time I thought no, I'm going to just rest and I'm going to recover because then you heal quicker.

I think it's really important to listen to your body and just take the time you need to if you possibly can! You're not going to get any prizes by trying to force it or trying to rush it because it will take double the amount of time to heal. I've learned the hard way.

I think when all of the memories of the leg have come flooding back and talking about Mum, it's still raw. And I think that's probably why I blocked a lot of it out because it was a tough time. A year after I'd broken my leg, Mum died on the 2nd of November. It was just a sh*tty time, to be honest, but we've got through it.

I listened to the consultant when he said, I recommend you have therapy. So I did, and it was such a godsend.

It was essential really because my friends didn't need to hear me moan all day long. Sigh didn't need me crying the whole time. I was trying to be brave for everybody, but actually, I needed somebody to vent to. I needed somebody to let it all out and, and get really good advice from. I was very over-sensitive, very emotional and I was rock bottom. I really, really was rock bottom. I didn't have a breakdown, but I was not far off, to be honest. I think the combination of all of those things just all added up really. It was jolly tough.

There is always light at the end of the tunnel. You have to hang on to that, and you have to focus on the positive things.

I just had to get better and get strong for my wonderful family by exercising, getting fit and building up my strength, all paired with the wonderful physio who pushed me.

If you've had an accident, I'm sure you can relate. And if you know anybody that is having a tough time, my advice is to rest, to let your body heal, to take time for yourself, and to get some help because there are no prizes by trying to battle on.

Breaking my leg was massively life-changing, but loads of positive things have come out of it. I have learned a huge amount about myself. There are things that I can't quite do in the same way as I used to, but that's okay, it doesn't matter. I can pretty much do everything I want!

On top of it all, I proved that consultant wrong. I did run. I ran two 10K races! Which in hindsight was probably a little bit irresponsible, I don't run more than 5K nowadays because I don't want to push it.

So just look after yourself.

Thank you for listening to me ramble on about my accidents in the past and how I've grown from them and what I've learned. I truly think that actually, positives do come out of the lowest, lowest points in life. You don't understand it at the time, but when you look back, you realize.

Sending you much, much, much love, and I will see you again next week when hopefully I am skipping around the place!

Love, Charlie x