Patient full of praise for £600,000 Horatio's Garden at Oswestry Orthopaedic Hospital
Adrian Davies looks out from his hospital ward at workmen digging out a special new garden and desperately wants to go and help them.
The Horatio's Garden project will, he says, transform the day-to-day lives of patients like him in the Midlands Centre for Spinal Injuries, based at Oswestry's Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital.
On May 30 this year, Adrian was a fit and active man, running his own paving business in Wem.
But a feeling of pins and needles in his fingers was the first sign of a life-changing illness that within 12 hours left him trapped in an immobile body.
The 54-year-old, fell seriously ill with Guillain Barre syndrome. He was put put in an induced coma to help him recover and remains in hospital today able only to use his shoulders and above - although treatment he is receiving is seeing improvements all the time.
As patient in the Midlands Centre for Spinal Injuries he is making day to day progress, slowly regaining the use of his body and he is confident that he will walk again.
He says that Horatio's Garden, being built for the centre at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital, will transform the lives of patients at the centre.
The garden will be used not only by patients like Adrian. who can move his electric wheelchair with a chin operated joystick, but also those in hospital beds.
It is being built to be fully accessible and will even have power points built into walls and floor so that machinery needed by the patients can be plugged in.
Trapped
There will also be a garden room where patients can be inside but feel as if they are outside.
"I have always been an outdoor person, working in farming and in the construction industry," he said.
"I watch the blokes on the diggers doing the groundwork for the garden and I so desperately want to be out there on the machinery.
"Gullian Barre syndrome means you are locked in, trapped in your body. But in hospital you are also trapped inside a building.
"This is a fantastic hospital and the staff are amazing. I have physio ever day, I can use the therapy pool and I am excited about the future. The garden will be a wonderful addition.
"This garden will give people the chance to get outside. I completely missed summer this year. Horatio's Garden would have allowed me to be outside."
"What this has taught me is never take things for granted. Make the most of and enjoy the small things in life. I can look out of the window now and see work on Horatio's Garden starting. It is so frustrating as I want to be one of those people who are on the diggers, creating the garden."
The £600,000 fundraising target for the garden was reached in just 18 months, including a £60,000 grant from Shropshire Freemason, £50,000 from the National Garden Scheme and other work from local groups including the hospital’s League of Friends.
