To Hell and Back? My Extraordinary Life Story

By Nick Ian Coleman

This is the incredible life story of a man who has lived with a severe and rare condition since he was 6 years old. Starting with the truly amazing events of his childhood and all the way through to the unbelievable and severe torture that he is living through now. This book will shock many people and enlighten them to the truth of how I am living and constantly being failed by the NHS, amongst others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Legend Press
• Release date: Sep 24, 2019
• ISBN: 9781789557770

Book preview

Redemption

Introduction

I was diagnosed with Friedreich’s Ataxia (FA) when I was 13 years old in the summer 1989. I’d had the condition since I was 6 years old and when I was at junior school, we (my parents and I) put it down to me being incredibly clumsy. But this didn’t explain why my voice had gone funny. As time went on I knew there was something wrong with me. The headmaster had asked my father for me to get checked out at hospital. My father wanted me to finish junior school before I would get checked. I was perfectly happy and determined, so I do not have a problem with waiting. I was very successful at junior school. In my final year I was made vice-captain of school, I was head of chess team for school, and county. My exam results were incredible (over 95%) I was a very special child and I had my whole life mapped in my head. I could see myself as a very successful accountant in London and I had a beautiful family. I could picture all of this when I was 10 years old. However, by then I knew something bad was wrong with me. So when I left junior school, I went to a leading hospital in London for tests. I was there for 3 days before they were able to confirm my condition. The doctors found it very hard to determine my condition as by then, I’d already had it 7 years. Most people who have FA are in a wheelchair within 5 years. The final meeting my parents and I had with the doctor was him telling us this and then he said a lot more. He said that my spine hadn’t curved too badly and as I can still walk (although not properly) it was very difficult for them to determine my condition even though blood and various other tests confirmed I had FA. He then explained how I got it, my mum is a carrier and my dad is too. The odds of each child getting FA are 4-1. But this explains why my mother has not got it. Overall he said the odds of anyone getting FA are 400,000-1. Next, he explained that FA was a terminal condition. The chances of getting a heart condition were very high. There was a fairly low chance I would die in my twenty’s, but a much higher chance that I would die in my thirty’s. If I lived beyond 40 I would be doing very well. On this news my parents were in tears. However I was stone faced. I knew there was something wrong with me badly and it was like I was waiting for this horrid news.

1975-1983 The Early Years (up to summer

1983)

I was born in November 1975. At that time Queen were number 1 with Bohemian Rhapsody and it snowed in July that year. My first memory was when I was 18 months old, I was at a railway stop being pushed in my pram by my babysitter. I remember a few holidays we spent as a family in my early years. Unfortunately I do not remember many things until I was 6 years old. One of my first memories was on holiday in Malta. I was known as the chocolate kid, as I always had chocolate smeared all over my face from eating chocolate ice creams, etc... When I was 3 years old, I was fooling around on my mother’s shoulders and the dog ran into my mother, meaning I had a bad fall. This caused a deep gash in my chin and I still have the scar from it. Also when I was younger, I had a fetish for bonio dog biscuits. I also remember fighting frequently with my brother, with pillows obviously. I was a very good child, I do remember when I was around 5 years old, and I did something very wrong. I had an open glue carton and was continuously snipping it. My mother saw me and I have never seen her act as angrily as then. When I was 6 years old I developed FA. I was at primary school and a very popular child. However this is when my voice first changed and a lot of children would take the micky out of me. Honestly it didn’t bother me. Also I used to make my father cups of tea. I soon noticed that when I brought them to him, I was spilling them a lot. Throughout the next couple of years I remained very popular and in 1983 I moved onto a private school.

In the summer of 1983 the greatest man that I have ever know in my lifetime died. I was only 7 years old at this time. However the older I get, the more I realise what a big chunk of my life had gone. In a way, our lives were similar in funny sort of way. He was my mother’s father, George Barnard. When he was 16 years old he was thrust into the frontline of the First World War, so by the age of 21 he had lived the most brutal life and seen many friends die up close to him, and all of this before he could go on to lead his own life. Over the next 30 years, he raised a large family (13 children) and worked very hard to provide for his family (as did his wife; she worked day and night for 50 years, even though she had 8 children all she would have off is a couple of days for each child). When the Second World War came around my grandfather was too old to be a soldier, so he was a captain during it. He was shot in the kneecap during the war and I have missed out on all of the stories he endured in the war. I believe the pain and suffering he faced would have been comparable to mine. See you in the next life,