An accident by the pool last Summer at her holiday accommodation near Faro, has left British tourist Debbie Aspinall paralysed from the waist down.
Debbie was on holiday with her husband, Warren, and friends, staying at a villa in Faro, when she slipped by the pool. ""We were going on holiday to Portugal with a group of friends. Me and Warren had just started our new business and this holiday was meant to be the last one before we got properly busy."
Six months later, Debbie is still in the hospital. Family and friends are raising funds to adapt the couples' house to her need, and to buy her an electric wheelchair.
48 year old Debbie explained that as she got up from her sunlounger by the pool, “I put my foot on the ground and when I got up, I slipped. I banged my head on the floor and suddenly couldn't feel anything below my neck. I thought I was just stunned, but half an hour later my friend, who is a nurse, examined me and realised it was something more serious."
"My hand started to claw and so she called me an ambulance. The ambulance team touched me and I couldn't feel anything. I passed out a few times on the way to hospital, and on arrival they sent me straight for a scan.
Tests and scans revealed that Debbie had broken the fifth vertebra in her spine, in the small of the back.
"They cut my clothes off me and I was operated on urgently”.
She said: "They were doing physio from the first day to try and wake up my limbs. Then in the second week, they started trying to sit me at the end of my bed. They put me on the end of the bed to test my balance, but I was just floppy."
After four weeks in a Portuguese hospital, the couple from Rainford flew back to the UK where Debbie was taken to the Walton Centre, before being moved to Southport Hospital then Sandpipers, for rehabilitation. Debbie still hasn't been back to her home since before the injury.
