Irreversible, my life, a battle: Memoirs

By Emmanuel Siaux

Forty years of an exciting life, until the day everything changes abruptly.

The accident, which obliges Emmanuel, a professional motorcycle pilot, and a motorcyclist in the national police, to leave the world of valid people and join the handicapped world.

In parallel, before the accident, during his coma and even afterwards, some mysterious signs appear and interfere in his life.
Chance or synchronicity? Were these signs meant to warn him? Was the accident planned? In order to slow his life down, or make it take a different turn?

Through his story, you will discover the hidden face of the daily life of a paraplegic, with all his suffering, psychological and physical, as well as the different steps in his reconstruction, full of obstacles and setbacks.

EXCERPT

It was 3 o’clock in the morning, on 22nd February 2013, and the alarm clock was ringing.
It was time to get up, to serve and represent the French Republic. As every other week, on Friday morning, I turned into a night bird. I drove to Toulouse Central Police Station, where I slipped into my show costume, or should I say my National Police motorcyclist outfit. I joined my colleagues for the regular alcohol level tests, and we all departed together for a precise location, in order to set up the device.

That morning, like many other mornings, our spot was located at the Ponts-Jumeaux, a very good place for “catching” drunken road delinquents. My mission was simple – when I say my mission, it was more the motorcyclist’s mission: chasing the naughty drivers who refused to submit to the test, or sometimes even just drove straight into the police roadblock. This mission was one I particularly enjoyed.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born in 1973, Emmanuel Siaux was a motorcyclist in the French national police for twenty years, France Road Rallye Champion and Team Manager of the French National Police Motorcyclist team. On the eve of his fortieth birthday, an accident on duty confines him to a wheelchair, obliging him to face a new challenge: the long road to reconstruction and learning to live as a paraplegic.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishroom
• Release date: Jun 8, 2017
• ISBN: 9791023606140

Book preview

THE ACCIDENT

It was 3 o’clock in the morning, on 22nd February 2013, and the alarm clock was ringing.

It was time to get up, to serve and represent the French Republic. As every other week, on Friday morning, I turned into a night bird. I drove to Toulouse Central Police Station, where I slipped into my show costume, or should I say my National Police motorcyclist outfit. I joined my colleagues for the regular alcohol level tests, and we all departed together for a precise location, in order to set up the device.

That morning, like many other mornings, our spot was located at the Ponts-Jumeaux, a very good place for catching drunken road delinquents. My mission was simple – when I say my mission, it was more the motorcyclist’s mission: chasing the naughty drivers who refused to submit to the test, or sometimes even just drove straight into the police roadblock. This mission was one I particularly enjoyed. We rarely spent a morning without encountering at least one refusal to comply. It was like a game to me, which provoked a little shot of adrenaline, which would get me fit for the day.

It was now 5 o’clock, no delay in the installation, and here we were, ready for action. Everything was normal, the daily routine. The first vehicles stopped, the drivers blew in turns. We had to start a chase on two occasions that morning, for two drivers who were in a hurry, and of course, did not want to pass the test.

That morning, we had won, and in fact won the jackpot: the two runaways we not only in a hurry, they were positive to the test. My colleague and I had managed to intercept them and bring them back to the control spot. I must say it didn’t always go so smoothly, but that morning, everything was perfect.

Our mission was over earlier than usual, because our customers that morning were particularly alcoholic, and we had to bring back our prisoners at the police station, in order to professionally carry out the criminal procedures.

Having encountered two refusals to comply, my team mate and I had decided to carry out one of the procedures ourselves, in order to help our colleagues, which was a little more than our regular mission, which was only to chase the runaway drivers.

Of course, if the drivers took too many risks, we were instructed to let them more or less drive away, and only record their license plates. You will easily understand that this was rather frustrating for us, but sometimes the authorities were right, the game just wasn’t worth it.

It was now 9 o’clock, our procedure was finished, we’d had a good cup of coffee at the reception, and we were ready to get back on our motorbikes to go out and patrol, looking over our Pink city, la Ville Rose, as we call Toulouse. It was very cold that morning, but the sun was shining and it was going to be a nice day. Despite this, what was going to happen was going to change my life forever.

I was due to finish work that day at 10:50 – we are very precise in the police! It was now 10:30, time to drive back to the police station.

My team mate and I were relaxed, satisfied to have had a normal morning, without encountering any problems. We were only two minutes from the police station and I decided to turn in the rue Salambô, a street I was very familiar with, as I very often drove down it to go back to the station.

I really knew it by heart, it was a main street, where we had priority on the vehicles arriving either from our left or our right, and there were many little streets crossing it on both sides. The drivers on these adjacent streets had to be very careful when crossing the rue Salambô, because visibility was not always at its best. I knew full well that this street was dangerous, and that’s why I was always very cautious when using it. In fact, I couldn’t understand why, in this street, there were only give-way signs and not proper stop signs. For me, a driving professional, it was unconceivable not to mark a mandatory and full stop in order to cross these junctions safely. I knew that, before the public services in charge of roadsigns started realising there was a problem, several serious or deadly accidents would have to occur, as in the rest of the country in fact.

I knew almost all the streets in Toulouse, and could only observe, powerless, that the infrastructures were largely unadapted and were becoming more and more dangerous for us motorcylists, as well as all these drivers, cyclists, pedestrians, whose number kept increasing.

In order to satisfy everyone, the Toulouse council and its road services invented incredible things every day. For example, in some very narrow and one way streets, they managed to create not only a cycling path, but one in the opposite direction to the traffic, how absurd! These people had probably reached deadlock, and wanted to please everyone. This was all very political of course, because if you managed to satisfy cars, bicycles and pedestrians, then everyone would be satisfied and a lot more people would vote for the excellent Mayor, who made his city move, move stupidly but move. Never mind if all these stupid and unsuitable transformations made the city dangerous, never mind the future accidents, never mind the future injured, never mind the future dead. Maybe one day they’ll understand that it was criminal to organise the roads and signs I such a ridiculous way. Poor Baron Haussman, he must be turning over in his grave, he who anticipated all these vehicles before everyone else, and created large roads in order to ease traffic and moves for everyone, so that everyone could find its place in the future…

I remember that, when I had been transferred from Paris to Toulouse, in January 2002, my first outings on my police motorbike had been very surprising. I regularly skidded, and had rapidly noticed that in the Pink City, all the road-marking was very slippery and dangerous for two-wheeled vehicles. Another stupid choice in the paint, since there existed some specific road holding paints, who were very efficient, like the very good one used on the roads in Paris. But in Toulouse, some idiot had probably signed a deal with a paint company without checking the features of the paint beforehand, probably because of a low price. The only thing is, you can’t allow to save on security in order to save on money. I’m convinced that many accidents could have been avoided if a wise and careful choice had been made.

That day, as I arrived at the first junction, where the rue Salambô crosses the rue Reyer, I had the unpleasant surprise to see a car appear suddenly in front of me, who had not respected the give way sign. He was coming from the rue Reyer on my left side, and was obviously driving straight ahead into the rue des Scouts. He seemed really keen in joining the scouts and in fact ending up more as a kamikaze, without any consideration for us. Despite my professionalism and my being used to avoiding bad drivers, this time it seemed to me very complicated. This car was just five meters in front of me, in motion, there was no way for me to avoid it, and there was too little distance left for me to brake and make my motorbike come to a halt. It was the first time in my life I felt so powerless, with no one to help me. I knew that this time the accident was going to happen.

Sometimes life is mysterious, I had been driving motorbikes for over twenty years, and had never had an accident. I had become a motorcyclist in the National Police in 1996, I had driven for thousands of kilometers in big cities, both in Paris and Toulouse, I had avoided tens of accidents with careless drivers… I had even represented the French National Police for years as a professional pilot, and you can imagine that motorcycling competition is not deprived of risk. It was incredible but true: this time there was no escape, the accident was inevitable.

Some people in this situation would have seen their life pass in front of their eyes. Not me. I just confronted this situation like the others, only knowing that I wouldn’t get out of it unhurt. I decided to stand on the footpegs of my motorbike, in order to try and save my life by not ending up embedded in the car-body of the white Citroën C3. My instinctive reaction was also to try and deviate my trajectory and aim at the car’s bonnet, since it was a lower obstacle, easier to pass than the driver cell. Unfortunately, the rest didn’t go as planned. Upon the impact, I lost consciousness and therefore didn’t control my landing. Damage is terrible when you fall like a puppet, like a dead weight.

I woke up shortly after this terrible impact, I had no idea where I was, and I could hear my colleague telling me you’ve had accident Manu, the firemen are here, they’re going to save you, hold on. Through my helmet, I could hear sirens coming from all directions, and I understood I hadn’t done things by halves, this time it was THE accident. I must say, I’m not usually someone who does things by halves. I tried to move, I was lying on the pavement, not a single part of my body reacted and I could feel myself leave. Suddenly, no more sound nor picture. Was I dead? I didn’t know. I was going to discover the answer fifteen days later.

Was the accident scheduled in my life? I still ask myself these questions: is our life programmed? Who are we? Why are we here? I ask myself all these questions because some signs, before the accident, had occurred. Were they linked to the accident? I do not know, but what I know is that they were here and they still are.

Indeed, for the last two years, I was perturbed by double figures, which I kept seeing every day. Each time I looked at the time, it was 22:22, 17:17… When I stopped vehicles for controls, they almost always had license plates with double figures. I was getting tired of this, and one day, I stopped in a street and asked my colleague if he could see the same as me: almost all the cars parked in this street had double numbers on their license plates. He confirmed that he saw the same, and I thought OK, I’m not going crazy! From then on, he could only note that this phenomenon occurred each time we patrolled together. It was really striking, in fact he was beginning to worry.

And what if I told you that the place where I had stopped on that day, with this series of double figured vehicles, was the rue Salambô, would you freak out? Let me freak you out once more, then we’ll go back to this later: I learned later on, after the accident, that my hospital room in intensive care was number 222, and to this day, 22 of my vertebrae are paralysed. Also, I was born on a 22nd, strange isn’t it? OK, I’ll keep some for later…

THE COMA

While the doctors were struggling to keep me alive, I was departing towards another world, coma. What a strange world, everything was mixed up, past, present, future. An indescribable world, I cannot put down in writing the sensations that I felt. You are in a world where you are suffering and feel very weak. You are among both alive and dead people, and others who are waiting to know in which world they are going to end up, just as I was. That must be what they call being trapped between life and death.

About this long waiting. My story was taking place in Spain. Why Spain? I couldn’t say, all I know is that, while I was in the coma, I knew exactly what injuries I was suffering from. How could I? Maybe because I could hear the doctors around me, describing them. Several organ donations were planned for me in a Spanish clinic, managed by a Korean professor. I was to be given half a body, in order to replace my legs and pelvis, and a complete rib cage, to replace my damaged lungs. It was just awful. A lady with her little girl was here to sign the donation form, since the organs were those of her husband, who had just died in a car accident. They had come to see me in order to meet the person through whom their husband and father was about to revive. This was an unforgettable and painful moment for me. I can still hear inside my head the crying of this little girl, who was calling for her father. At that moment, time was ticking, and my main problem was a breathing problem. I was lying on a bed next to two others beds, in the basement of this clinic, and a white tunnel was facing us, a strong light emanating from it. On the left, I could see some old Spanish ladies, all dressed in black, and they were signaling us to come to them, with continuous gestures.

They were watching over some kind of dormitory, filled with dead bodies, and they insisted on us coming to them. At that moment, I suppose my life was only hanging by a thread. Finally, I must have chosen the white light, and gone down this tunnel, because I’m still here.

Yes, my memory could not record the entire story of my coma, I understood that later. I suffered two cardiac arrests, due to breathing difficulties. In fact my most important pain during the coma really was the lack of oxygen. The rest of the story of my coma really convinced me that I hadn’t been hallucinating, and that there probably was an explanation to all this.

The clinic consisted in five levels, and the top floor was destined to families visiting their loved ones, with a big restaurant. That day, all of my family was here, and I was sitting with them, they were all chatting together, looking very merry, while I was encountering terrible breathing difficulties. I didn’t dare say anything, until I couldn’t go on anymore, I really had to go back to my room to rest, with an oxygen mask. I was talking to my brother, who was sitting just next to me, but couldn’t hear me, neither could my father, and the others members of my family were sitting behind me, all excited, but none of them could see my distress, not once. I could see my brother and father stuffing themselves with food, without taking any notice of my calls. I couldn’t understand why no one was answering. A little later, my grandmother sat down next to me, and starting eating too. I looked at her and said: You neither you, Mamie, you don’t want to listen to me, you all prefer to eat and let me agonise! What are you talking about? she answered. I would never let you suffer. The day gradually passed by, my family finally left the restaurant, and my aunt, Marie-Hélène, one of the last ones to leave, called my grandmother