Dealing with adversity
Tara Howell (1990, English)

Tara came up to Queens' in 1990 to read English. A natural athlete, she quickly became a member of the Hare & Hounds and ran for the University second team, which earned her a place in the Valkyries, the Queens' women's sports society. In her final year, she also trained in pentathlon - an amazing and unique opportunity to compete in a range of disciplines - and was slated for the first team, but sadly a leg injury and an unfortunate performance in the shooting competition ruined her chances of selection.

In 2014, while a successful advertising executive, Tara's life changed drastically after falling from her horse and breaking her neck. She lay in a field for over five hours until a passer-by noticed her horse standing rider-less. It had not left her side. She was rescued by the air ambulance.

The road to recovery, via Harry Potter audiobooks

In the two months after the accident, Tara went thorugh an eight-hour operation, a two-week coma in intensive care, a chest infection and a stint on a ventilator. By early October, she was transferred out of high dependency and onto a general ward.

From Tara:  "By this point I was breathing on my own without a ventilator (HUGE hoorah!) but my diaphragm was still paralysed and my lungs only partially working.  I couldn’t cough or shout for example and I couldn’t either operate the nurses’ call button or the TV remote by my bed. So every night I was trapped in the dark for hours until the nurses returned. 

"This is not a mental or physical recipe for peaceful sleep; in fact it’s a surefire recipe for gibbering to oneself quietly (I did quite a lot of that) all the way through to a full blown panic attack.  Enter a genius idea, this one from my mother – audiobooks. She turned up for visiting hours one day clutching headphones and a little MP3 player onto which could be loaded stories. Demonstrating my sophistication and literary bent, I passed over all the classics and chose to have the Harry Potter books downloaded and piped into my ears as narrated by the mellifluous and familiar tones of Stephen Fry. 

"At lights out in the ward the headphones would be added to my night-time outfit and the ‘play’ button pressed for me.  I would drift off to sleep, high as a kite on my various drugs as quidditch matches played out and then, when I awoke in the dark, in those early hours of the morning when everything seems terrifying, Stephen would be right there chatting about whomping willows and flying cars. True, he had usually patiently told me all about the goings on of twenty chapters or sometimes the whole rest of the book whilst I’d been ungratefully unconscious but since I had actually read all the novels, this did not bother me in the slightest.

"The comfort factor of having something to anchor me and to take my mind off the discomfort and the fear was priceless. I can tell you that it is impossible to panic with Stephen telling you a story."

It was during this time in hospital that Tara came up with an idea to raise money to thank the air ambulance service that saved her life. Her father, David Howell, is a professional artist, and they agreed that he would create a limited edition racehorse print and a series of greetings cards to raise money for Spinal Research and the Yorkshire Air Ambulance service.

Air Ambulance confusion...

Once the painting and prints were ready, Tara and her father were invited for a tour of the Yorkshire Air Ambulance base. Upon arrival, a member of the team there went to check the log to see exactly which medics had rescued Tara, only to discover that it had not been the Yorkshire Air Ambulance service that had rescued her, but in fact the Great North Air Ambulance!

With all the fundraising launch materials prepared, Tara decided not to change the focus of their fundraising, and instead shared the raised money between both ambulance services and the spinal research charity.

Research into spinal cord injury

Previously considered medically impossible, the last few years have seen significant jumps forward in research into spinal cord injury, with a number of scientists now believing it will be possible to find a cure.

Human trials on neuromodulation have already been held in Glasgow and London with more scheduled for next year, pandemic allowing. More information can be found on the Spinal Research website.

And, while this research is specifically into spinal cord injury, if doctors are able to successfully prompt neurological repair in the spinal cord, the implications for the treatment of strokes, motor neurone disease, multiple sclerosis and many other diseases could be enormous.

Read more, including her humorous blog, A Fox Lake, on Tara's website.