It was a \u201cpenguin dive\u201d into the family pool that put him there. Diving with his arms at his side to protect a dislocation-prone shoulder was something Conway had done countless times before. On this occasion he hit his head on the pool floor, causing a complete fracture of the C7 vertebra. He couldn\u2019t move anything below his shoulders and couldn\u2019t swim to the surface. His friends saved him, diving in and pulling him from the water. Conway was rushed to Middlemore Hospital for emergency surgery: removing vertebrae fragments, adding screws and a bone graft. After a week in ICU and another in a ward he moved to the Auckland Spinal Rehabilitation Unit.<\/p>\n
Conway stayed there for three and a half months \u2013 the unit has 20 inpatient beds \u2013 for rehabilitation following his injury. There he learned how to live with a spinal cord injury, got set up with assistive equipment and worked on regaining movement. His days were a mixture of physiotherapy, education, occupational therapy and medical examinations. Something was always beeping. He\u2019d count down the time until his discharge date.<\/p>\n
When he eventually did leave, home was somewhere completely new \u2013 a duplex that offered more space, augmented with ramps and a more spacious bathroom. \u201cI thought everything would be better because I was at home, but it was actually way harder.\u201d Amidst the adjustment period were a couple of difficult weeks when he realised this injury was forever: he\u2019s paralysed from the chest down.<\/p>\n
Thanks to surgery and rehab work, Conway has regained more function in his hands. (Photo: Ike Conway)<\/p>\n
Conway\u2019s come a long way in one year. \u201cWhen I woke up, I couldn\u2019t use my hands at all.\u201d They slowly started waking up and in July he underwent nerve transfer surgery on both arms to gain more function. \u201cNow I can grip things and pick things up. And that should continue to evolve over the next five years. [It\u2019s] fairly new surgery, so I\u2019m lucky that I could have had that.\u201d<\/p>\n
He could barely speak after his first spinal surgery, which affected his throat, but his voice came back too.<\/p>\n
An expressive, energetic talker, Conway gestures frequently with arms and hands \u2013 movement he still has control of. He gets around with the help of a wheelchair, taking the bus and being driven by car, which he relies on a wooden board to transfer in and out of. He hates people touching his wheelchair without his consent. \u201cThat happens all the time,\u201d says Conway. \u201cDon\u2019t help me unless I ask.\u201d<\/p>\n
These days he wakes up at 6.30am and meditates. His support worker arrives at 7am to get him ready for the day, which takes an hour and a half. Then there\u2019s an hour of stretching and mobilisation \u2013 he\u2019s at risk of muscle atrophy and joint freezing \u2013 another hour of standing, then shoulder rehab. \u201cIf it weren\u2019t for my bloody shoulder, I wouldn\u2019t have broken my neck.\u201d<\/p>\n
He attends the Training for Independence programme at Rope Neuro Rehabilitation in Grey Lynn twice a week, where functional electrical stimulation (FES) helps retrain his nerve pathways and stimulate his muscles. A whole day is devoted to \u201ccognitively exhausting\u201d hand movement. Hydrotherapy is his favourite time of the week; Conway still loves swimming. Core strength exercises show some of his abdominal muscles are working \u2013 \u201clittle by little changes\u201d \u2013 and two weeks ago movement was detected in his glutes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The first few months after the accident he couldn\u2019t even sit up; the spinal cord injury made controlling his blood pressure difficult. \u201cNow I can stand for an hour and maintain a safe blood pressure.\u201d He hopes to progress from a standing frame to leg braces. \u201cThen hopefully by the time I get married, I will be able to stand for a short period.\u201d (Conway proposed to his partner earlier this year. \u201cHer support is unparalleled.\u201d)<\/p>\n
The couple have filled their home with things they\u2019ve collected during their relationship and their many books. (Photo: Ike Conway)<\/p>\n
With much of Conway\u2019s time spent in the house, his environment has a profound impact. Conway and his fiancee Isabelle Carson have a kitten, Agnes, who keeps him company. \u201cI\u2019d never been a cat person, but it turned out to be the best thing ever.\u201d She\u2019s always on his lap.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s important that home is somewhere he\u2019s happy. \u201cWe\u2019ve curated it so much. Every square centimetre of it is beautiful to look at.\u201d There\u2019s a \u201creally meaningful piece of art\u201d, a piece of limestone carved into a C7 vertebrae by Conway\u2019s mate, Cole Cranswick. Another work, photographs of german shepherds, is by Elijah Broughton \u2013 the friend who pulled Conway from the pool as he was drowning. \u201cHe saved my life. The dogs look after me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Broughton wasn\u2019t Conway\u2019s only saviour. \u201cI had a couple of other friends who were there that night and dragged me out,\u201d he explains. \u201cI\u2019m so lucky to have them.\u201d On his anniversary they all went to Sandringham restaurant Satya and reminisced. \u201cIt\u2019s good to talk about, because for a while it was traumatic to remember. But I\u2019ve kind of overcome that, and now I can feel grateful for the way things turned out.\u201d<\/p>\n
That took work too \u2013 a transformative two hours with his psychologist unpacking that fateful evening. \u201cEvery moment of it, everything I could remember, how that made me feel.\u201d After that, addressing it became easier. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t provoke that fight or flight feeling that it would before; I\u2019d get into a loop of experiencing that over and over again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Conway credits his friends (pictured) family and partner Isabelle Carson with helping him get to where he is now. (Photos: Supplied)<\/p>\n
Ongoing psychology and meditation have been vital. \u201cThose two tools have kind of given me the means to stay afloat.\u201d Conway pauses and corrects himself. \u201cNot just afloat. I feel like I\u2019m thriving.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Conway can\u2019t work yet, he visits the family workroom a couple of times a week, where his twin Ike and brother Cosmo are busy with the Sylvester label, which relaunched in April 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Originally a sister line to their mother Kate Sylvester\u2019s namesake brand, which announced its closure in 2024, Sylvester was revived by the three brothers soon after. \u201cIt was all pretty much ready to go. Then the injury happened,\u201d says Conway. \u201cSo that was pretty devastating, watching it from the sideline, being locked in hospital.\u201d He was allowed leave to attend the store launch in Commercial Bay, his first out-of-hospital visit. \u201cThat was super emotional. We were all there crying.\u201d<\/p>\n
Conway grew up around fashion, cultivating a distinctive sense of style and deep appreciation of clothes. That got rocked this past year too. What he could wear changed radically.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The short women\u2019s T-shirts he loved now ride up in his chair, while blazers catch on the wheels. His beloved belts dig in and can create pressure issues, as can jean rivets. They\u2019re things no one thinks about until they have to. Conway gave away all his shoes \u2013 they no longer fit his swollen feet. \u201cEverything\u2019s had to be reconsidered. Initially it was a really big identity thing and I didn\u2019t feel comfortable in any of my clothes,\u201d he says. He\u2019s working on that though, fashioning a new sense of self. \u201cTies are still part of my identity, that\u2019s not restricted at all.\u201d Realising he could still tie them himself was a special moment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He\u2019s also appreciating utilitarian garments more than he used to, like the work of Kiko Kostadinov and Rei Kawakubo. \u201cHigh fashion, but also technical and functional design \u2013 that\u2019s really resonating with me, because it\u2019s kind of how I have to live my life.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Symbolic artworks by Cole Cranswick and Elijah Broughton adorn the Sandringham home. (Photo: Ike Conway)<\/p>\n
When he\u2019s out and about, a secondhand Prada bowling bag sits on his lap holding all the essentials. He\u2019ll fish around in it with painted nails (no longer able to bite them since his injury) for his Dior \u201cgranny glasses\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Conway\u2019s identity has evolved since his accident. So have the responsibilities in his relationship, with Carson now the breadwinner. But when all the household chores are done, he and Carson are on the couch and his wheelchair is gone, \u201cthe roles can become what they were\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Books are a respite for them both. So are movies. \u201cWe live right next to Saint Lukes, so I can hop on my electric wheelchair, she can hop on my lap and we can zoom to the cinema.\u201d (Conway is a huge Lord of The Rings fan, and Elijah Wood made a surprise appearance at a Sylvester event this year; it was one of the highlights of his year.)<\/p>\n
The recent Nick Cave concert was too. \u201cIt was pretty spiritual to be honest.\u201d Music helped Conway get through the roughest parts of being in the spinal unit, with Nick Cave\u2019s work especially helpful because it deals with grief. \u201cAfter experiencing grief and trauma, I think it had a newfound significance to me.\u201d Concerts are something he can do; he\u2019s looking forward to Mark William Lewis, Agnes Obel and Brian Jonestown Massacre.<\/p>\n
Another high has been watching his brothers\u2019 growth. \u201cIt\u2019s bittersweet. I just love watching them evolve into that. And I know that my time will come too.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Conway\u2019s natural recovery is starting to taper off he holds a lot of hope in the future. \u201cI\u2019m 25 and science and technology has gone crazy; they\u2019ll figure out something and I\u2019ll be walking again.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The son of Kate Sylvester and Wayne Conway tells The Spinoff about fashioning a new identity and moving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294665,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[28976,492,1054,156,64709,134,111,139,69,2935,162683],"class_list":["post-294664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-accidents","tag-comments-enabled","tag-disability","tag-entertainment","tag-fashion-industry","tag-health","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-society","tag-wheelchair-users"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}