After I broke my neck my husband looked after me – now I care for him

In the first of a new fortnightly column Melanie Reid explains how a riding accident changed her life, and the challenges of being a carer now

- Melanie Reid

“Never sick or sorry.” When I was a pony-mad kid, that's how small ads described horses for sale: archaic shorthand from a time when the value of animals and people lay in their suitability for work or war.

Occasionally, I've chewed on that memory. I've had time enough. It's 15 years since I fell off my horse at a leisure event, landed head-first, broke my neck and was transformed from a wannabe superwoman into the sickest and sorriest of creatures.

Had I been the horse, of course, I would have been dispatched on the spot and hauled off to the knacker's yard. I've thought about that too.

At the time of my accident, I was at the top of my game, professionally and physically. Forgive me - the when-I club is all I have left now. Grant me this poignant humblebrag. At 52 I was tall, strong and can-do, fitter than I'd ever been, running 10Ks, attending exercise classes. My career was flourishing, my self-esteem higher than ever before. And yes, mistress of my universe, I was physically arrogant. And complacent. I expected to carry on having a good life for as long as it suited me.

But don't most of us? Life resembles travelling by train. It's statistically safe; we assume we'll get there. Those of us who grow up insulated from real hardship expect to glide into retirement and healthy, comfortable old age - holidays, good books, inheritance tax strategies, learning Finnish, hanging out in man sheds, voluntary work. Emptying our accounts of those fabulous boomer benefits.

Scratch our skin, and even the most altruistic of us bleeds a little self-satisfied.