Survivor thanks ‘dedicated’ physios for ability to stand

Gill Hicks, who lost both legs below the knee, she said she could only stand at the speakers’ lectern thanks to ‘imaginative, professional and dedicated’ physiotherapists.

She paid tribute to physios who had given her ‘the confidence to fall’.

‘And if I have the confidence to fall then I have the confidence to stand and the confidence to make a step,’ she said.

Dr Hicks recalled physios formulating a rehab plan for her during the three months she spent in St Thomas’ Hospital immediately after the blasts, and urging her to engage her muscles as she lay in intensive care.

Being able to catch a ball of bandages thrown by her physio was the start of a ‘really interesting journey’.

Before the bombings she knew nothing of the world of amputees, she said. ‘There is this whole parallel world that physios operate in that I had no idea about, that you work with every day.’

‘I spend moments when I’m completely in awe of the body’s ability to survive and achieve,’ she told congress delegates.

For more reports from CSP Congress in Liverpool see pages 16-19