“It has been traumatising for the whole family”
Dad Dave Palmer, 64, with his wife Lindsey and their two daughters, Tessa and Jasmine(Image: Tessa Palmer)
A “fit and healthy” dad is paralysed after “blacking out” and falling from a mountain in Wales. Keen mountaineer Dave Palmer, 64, had been climbing Tryfan in Snowdonia on April 26, with a group of hikers, including his wife Lindsey, 59, when he fell backwards down the mountain.
The dad-of-two, from Glossop, was airlifted to Aintree Hospital by mountain rescue, where his “traumatised” family were told he was paralysed from the chest down. Three months later the dad remains in hospital fighting to recover.
His daughter, Tessa Palmer, 26, told the ECHO how he had been training for an expedition in Peru at the time of the fall. She said: “My dad is a keen mountaineer, he’s an alpine climber and had planned an expedition in Peru in May.
“He’d put together a team for the expedition and as part of their team building they’d gone to Wales for a hike in April. They’d gone on a scramble up Tryfan but as my dad was going up he blacked out and fell back around 5m and landed really badly.
“The team went down to him but he was unconscious. He came back around – my mum was there, she is a doctor – he said to her ‘I can’t feel my legs or arms, I can’t move my legs.’ My mum realised it was really serious and rang mountain rescue.”
Dave was airlifted to Aintree Hospital where he was told he had broken his neck and underwent surgery that night on his spine. He was transferred to The Walton Centre which provides specialist neuro-rehabilitation, where he spent over a month in the ICU.
Dave is paralysed from the chest down after his fall from Tryfan in Snowdonia (Image: Tessa Palmer)
Tessa said: “It was pretty tough. The injury basically made him not be able to breathe properly because his muscles were paralysed so he had to be put on a ventilator.
“He was ventilated for weeks before he was weaned off it. He has now been moved to the Princess Royal Spinal Cord Injuries Centre in Sheffield where he is slowly hitting milestones. He has started physiotherapy and rehab on the muscles he has left.”
Tessa, who has a younger sister, Jasmine Palmer, 24, says the incident has been “traumatising” for the whole family. She said: “It’s been awful, it was traumatising.
“It’s something you don’t think will happen to your family or you will ever have to hear. When I first got the phone call telling me what had happened to dad I didn’t process it at – I just heard ‘dads had a serious accident,’ I did process it at first, not until I arrived at A&E and realised. Your soul leaves your body, it’s terrible.”
Dave is an experienced mountaineer (Image: Tessa Palmer)
His daughter said doctors don’t know what Dave’s recovery will look like at this stage as he is yet to regain any movement from his paralysed muscles. She told the ECHO how he is still paralysed from the chest down and can’t even move his hands.
She said: “It’s been a very tough thing for him to accept. He had a few tough weeks coming to terms with it but he is very determined and positive and puts his all into everything he has ever done in his life – recently we’ve started to see glimmers of that coming back and it’s lovely to see.
“Anything he will do to help himself, he will do it. He is very positive and it helps.” The family have now set up a GoFundMe to help with funding treatment and adapting their home in Glossop so Dave can come home.
Due to his injuries he will need specialist equipment which Tessa says is “very expensive.” They are also taking on a huge challenge as a family where they will be running a marathon to raise money for Dave.
You can donate to the family fundraiser and find out more here.