Shropshire archer Mikey Hall aiming to battle back to Paralympics fitness after serious illness
Just 16 months ago Mikey Hall was in Rio competing for the UK in the Paralympic Games.
Two years before the talented archer had won a bronze and a gold in the Invictus Games.
He was training hard to win a place in the national team for future competitions when he was struck down with injury problems that have seen him spend the last seven months in the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital, at times seriously ill.
Now Mikey is facing having to be transferred to a specialist hospital in Manchester for further treatment.
Despite coming close to losing his life, the 42-year-old former soldier from St Martins, near Oswestry, says he is determined to battle back and regain his fitness.
He is hoping that he will be able to have an operation in March, his sixth during his stay in hospital, and then start the long road to recovery.
His aim is to win a place on the archery team at the Tokio Paralympics in 2020.
Mikey fell ill in June 2017 days before he was due to compete in the Czech Republic. He had emergency surgery but suffered septicaemia.
"I was put into a coma on life support," he said.
"Five operations later I have an open wound that has to heal by itself before I can be discharged. I am doing physio but where as I was training hard in the gym before the illness, now the physio is simply to try to get me to hold my weight.
"I have lost so much muscle mass I can't do anything for myself any more. It is so, so difficult to keep positive.
"Everyone at the hospital has been brilliant, doctors, nurses everyone. But it is so hard at the moment.
Help for Heroes Sports Recovery Programme
"My aim is to have this operation and then build my fitness up again this year. Then next year I will be competing for a place in the archery team again. I am looking forward to Tokio 2020.
The ex-serviceman joined the army in 1995, serving in the 1st The Queen’s Dragoons Guard.
In 2000 he was seriously injured during a training exercise, when he fell off a rope bridge and broke his neck in two places and fractured his spine.
He joined the Help for Heroes Sports Recovery Programme and excelled in archery.
As well as the Paralympics, Mikey competed in Prince Harry’s inaugural Invictus Games in 2014, the World Para Archery Championships and Para Continental Championships.
