‘I instantly thought, “Oh no, this is serious,”’ Hayden recalls of coming off his surfboard in shallow waters.
‘I hit the top of my head on a shallow sandbank and I knew I had done serious damage to my neck, arms and chest, and I had pins and needles.’ Hayden’s ex-girlfriend was with him at the time and rushed him to hospital
‘I fractured my C3 and C4 [vertebrae] and had done damage to my longitude ligaments, so my neck was very unstable.’
As a result, Hayden was bedridden in hospital for six weeks.
‘I had months and months of physio and acupuncture and it took almost two years before I felt like I had made a full recovery.'
This article originally appeared on New Idea.
