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Too upset even to cry, I could only stammer my apologies, but they were totally nonplussed, matter-of-fact. Don’t worry, they said. Part of the job. Happens all the time. For me it seemed catastrophic. My first morning in the gym, when I had planned to hit the machines, develop sizeable shoulders and start my legs moving again, all within the space of an hour, and there I was being lowered, stinking, onto pads on the wheelchair, hurried back to the ward, laboriously hoisted again onto a bed of pads and rolled and cleaned like a baby. I was getting an inkling of what exactly paralysis entailed.

Over the next few days, I had a few more brief sessions in the gym when, thank God, my bowels did not betray me. The gym offered a welcome distraction from reflection. It wasn’t wise to sit and dwell on your plight. ‘Gym,’ one cynical spinal consultant once muttered, ‘is really only there to take people’s mind off things.’ You hid your despair as much as you could, if only because too many tears invoked a dreaded visit from the Kiwi psychologist, whose amiable ‘Have you got time for a chit?’ confirmed to you that matters really were wrist-slittingly terminal.