'I just flew out into a field and tumbled'

Shattered Lives Part Three: Two years after a motorbike crash which left him unable to walk, Tom Broder still hopes for a miracle, he tells Ruadhán Mac Cormaic.

'I was big into the bikes; I still love them. That particular bike I'd had for a year and a half, but I was always on them since I was 16, always getting up on bikes and scramblers, messing about, the usual thing." In all that time, says Tom Broder, not once had he been close to coming off, not once had he felt that he'd lost control, not once had he thought it might be him.

It happened on St Patrick's Day two years ago. As they did every year, Tom and some friends from the Motorcycle Club had run their bikes in the parade in Ballymahon, Co Longford, he showing off the cherished GSXR 1127 that brought him the plaques which still adorn the mantelpiece at home. He had all the gear: boots, helmet, the jacket; and the leather trousers that they would cut off him later that evening in Mullingar Hospital.

The day was petering out by the time Tom and a friend decided to make for home and headed out on the back roads towards Moate, Co Westmeath, Tom in front and his friend not far behind. "It was evening time, about 7.15pm or that. It was starting to get dark; it was kind of in between light and dark. It wasn't raining or anything - it was probably the finest day we had on Paddy's Day in a while. A decent day for March."

It was a route he would have taken once or twice a week and he would have known it fairly well. The turn itself was a familiar one: a few miles from home, the road rises on a slight hill then takes a swift swing to the right; a gate and a large pillar face you as the bend draws near.

"I might have been going a bit too fast for that road, you know. It's not that I was speeding or anything, but that road is a really bad winding road. I just came to the corner and ended up going straight through it and hit an old stone pillar. Well, I didn't hit the [ pillar] myself, the bike hit it. I just flew out into the field and tumbled. That's what done the damage, when I was tumbling."

As he fell, the helmet came off, but luckily he managed to keep his head from taking the force of the fall. Elsewhere, however, the damage was severe: "I broke my back in two places, broke my ribs, punctured my lung. I hit the tank and it shocked my spine, so the two vertebrae I broke - they were D3 and D5 - one of them kind of exploded and some of the bits of bones went into my spinal column and damaged the spinal cord."

Those last few minutes are drawn not from memory but from the jumble of half-remembered moments and the recounted view of the friend who watched it all play out before him. Tom can recall filling up at a petrol station in Athlone that evening, but beyond that, the afternoon is a vacant screen.

"I don't remember the crash at all, thank God. I remember being in the Mater hospital. I remember waking up in the tunnel - I was getting an MRI scan. I didn't know where the hell I was. That's the first time I can remember. I was conscious all the way through it; I went to Mullingar hospital and I was conscious there, and they brought me to the Mater hospital and I was chatting with the doctors, but I've no memory of it at all. The mind blocked it out, I suppose, and I'm pleased enough. It's not something you want to remember." The news came quickly, and not to Tom's surprise. After a few tests and reflex exercises, the doctors told him plainly: he wouldn't walk again.

THE UPHEAVAL COULD hardly have been greater. Tom was only 28 at the time of the crash, and worked as a builder for a Moate-based engineering company, leaving home at sunrise, travelling to sites across the country and rarely returning before nightfall. Although separated from his wife, he spent the weekends looking after his two young girls, Kaithlynn and Andrea, then aged three and one. But if, after the crash, the choice was to succumb or to push on, then there was no choice to make.

"I was pretty confident from the start. Obviously some people get down and they wouldn't even bother. Even before I had my accident, I used to get up and go. So I got it into my head that if I did get down, I'd go by the wayside. The whole thing is to be positive. Well, the whole thing is not to get yourself into that situation, but these things happen."

Even before leaving the rehabilitation hospital, he had bought a new, converted car, a sporty Mitsubishi automatic with a handle alongside the steering wheel for the throttle and brake. At the bungalow he owned outside Moate, some ramps for the wheelchair were fitted and the rest of the house cleared for his return.

"Before my accident, I would never have thought of steps being an obstacle. I would never have thought of someone in a wheelchair getting around Moate. But now it's totally different, trying to get in and out of places, up and down hills. You have to ring ahead the whole time to see if places are wheelchair-accessible. You have to plan everything.

"Life had to change in every way. You have to re-adapt, work-wise. I used to work on building sites the whole time - I worked on Croke Park, I built the roof on Croke Park - I was all into that sort of thing.

"There would be a lot of things that would be going through your mind, but you're better off not thinking about them. You try to think of the things you can do rather than the things you can't do."

Tom is currently studying at Athlone Institute of Technology to be a draughtsman, and has been promised an office job with his old employer in Moate once he has the qualification. Although the ramps help, his house was never suitable for a wheelchair: the kitchen and bathroom are too small and the hall is barely the width of the chair. So the local community rallied round, running a fundraising campaign that was generously led by the local GAA and his employer, Andrew Mannion Engineering Ltd. Now the plan is for a new, purpose-built house on some land near his current home. "The planning permission is actually going in today, so hopefully in a couple of months' time we'll be rocking and rolling," he says.

He still collects the children every Friday afternoon and brings them to his house until Sunday evening. They might have been wary at first, he says, but "it's second nature to them now. They were great. They're at a young age, I suppose - it's a lot easier for them to adapt when they're younger. They accept things much quicker. They're great; not much trouble at all."

Seeing Tom's affliction did jolt others around him. In the years since his crash, most of his friends have lost interest in the bikes. He tells of one time they were talking about it all and one of them asked aloud: "Which one of us is next?"

"They wouldn't really bother at all any more. Some of them sold their bikes and others only go out once a month, once every two months. They see the hardships you have to go through, I suppose." He knows that for all his expertise, all his precautions, all his care, the danger was always that much greater on two wheels.

"Everyone's going to say they're a headstone on handlebars. They are more dangerous all right, but it's all about how you use it, how you treat it. I'd been on bikes for a long time; every weekend you'd be tipping out there."

For now, each goal ticked is another one set. Once he finishes the course in Athlone and settles back into work, the next aim will be to see a bit more of the world.

"I'd like to start heading abroad after a while. Do a few spins abroad. I've been to the Isle of Man all right, and I was over in France there for a while. I wouldn't mind getting as far as America now and see how things go over there."

And only now and then does he allow himself retrace the old thoughts, relive the old days.

"I'd love to be still up, putting up buildings. I miss that, I used to love it. Out in the air, watching the steel structures going up everywhere. That was the reason I was up at five o'clock in the morning going to work and then not home till eight or nine in the evening. The joy of seeing thebuildings go up, you know. There was a right buzz around Croke Park all right when we were up there. Big cranes. People buzzing around. Things getting done."

"According to the hospital, I won't walk again. But in everyone's head in a wheelchair, you're always thinking you'd love to walk again. You'd always be hoping that something would come along. Some miracle."

Tomorrow, Part Four: 'I went to touch my legs but I couldn't feel anything'. David Orr tells how a swerve to avoid a dog has changed his whole life