“This was when I had to try and get upright,” says Barnes. “I had been looking forward to it for so long that I built it up like ‘yes, I can sit up and I can walk’.
“On the first day the physio came round, a couple of inches of incline made me feel sick. My body had adjusted to being flat. Any sort of incline, I didn’t like. I fainted on Ollie’s mum, she was in panic mode and started hitting buttons.
“I thought ‘am I ever going to get upright again without feeling ill or faint?’. It took me a good four or five days to get upright and to feel comfortable upright.
“Once I was up, it was a lot nicer, because I could sit and eat breakfast rather than having to be fed laying down.”
Getting out of bed for the first time happened a few days before Barnes was released from hospital after just four of the eight weeks she was predicted to spend there.
“That was the first time I started moving,” she explains. “It was all very well getting upright, but then I had to get out the bed and try to move. I got to the toilet and back, a couple of metres, and it felt like an achievement.
“Despite the bumps on the way out of hospital and trying to get in the car, it was nice leaving even ‘though I had to have blood-thinning injections every day.
“I couldn’t inject myself, my mum did them. It hurt, I know it sounds pathetic after everything I have been through, but these little things into your stomach, they are like the devil. I would dread it every day.”
