'Disability has changed my life for the better'

Grace Spence Green was left paralysed when she was crushed by a man falling from a balcony. Now she hopes her positive attitude and rewarding new life will inspire others

- INTERVIEW BY CHARLOTTE HEATHCOTE

Grace Spence Green was a 22-year-old medical student with hopes of a great future when one afternoon in October 2018 a man leapt from a third-floor balcony in Westfield shopping centre, east London - and landed on top of her.

The tragic incident broke her spine, leaving her paralysed from the chest down. And suddenly the trainee doctor had become a patient. Now, in powerful new book, To Exist As I Am, Grace, now 29, tells the story of her traumatic experience, and her physical and mental recovery. And astonishingly this woman full of extraordinary resilience, determination and positivity says she wouldn't change what happened to her.

"As the years went by, what I gained through my disability - how it's changed me, the relationships that have changed - I can now say I wouldn't change it because of all I've gained from it," she says.

Grace doesn't remember the moment of her accident. She only recalls walking along the shopping centre atrium towards the train station then waking up on the floor, unable to feel her legs. "I remember crying, maybe screaming."

She spent two weeks in hospital where titanium was bolted into her spine to hold her shattered vertebrae in place. She spent much of that first week “floating on a cloud” of morphine, while her parents and her partner of three years, Nathan, spent every possible moment by her bedside.

Meanwhile, Grace, who had enjoyed a happy, loving and comfortable upbringing in London, “felt as though I just slipped out of my life”.

Five days after her injury, she began to write daily, finding it therapeutic. But when she came to writing her new book it was painful to revisit those earlier entries.

"I felt really sorry for this girl," says Grace. "I didn't quite recognise her because lots of it was really angry or muddled.