There are many things I could write about the emotional effects caused by an injury such as that suffered by my son. Everyone whose life is touched by something like this has to deal with the consequences at some stage. For each of us, the effects are different.

I would like to tell of the black days that Nick suffered, but here is not the place to plumb those dark and painful depths. Times when, at 2am, he would let me know he was awake and I would get up and go upstairs where we would sit talking of his despair for hours. I could tell of the pain and frustration of failure after failure, loss after loss that gradually made their way through into conscious realisation, bringing with them a sense of hopelessness.

But we do not focus on these. We focus on the positives, the achievements, no matter how small they may seem to those not intimately involved. They are, without exception, major triumphs to us.

The pursuit of sanity takes many guises.

For us, it resides in hope.

My partner had his own emotional wreckage to deal with which became a large factor in the sad ending of our relationship.

My younger son and stepsons were affected, deeply, by the event itself and the long term fall out. As I have said before, the ripples are endless.

Myself I can speak of. There was the initial fear, shock and despair, of course. There was the uncertainty. There were the nightmares, the post-traumatic stress. There were days I looked at my son wondering how the hell I would cope, days when I caught a glimpse of the ‘old’ Nick and wondered why I could not remember him clearly. There are days when I simply grieve for my son’s suffering and when it breaks my heart.

Yet, hope, optimism, determination keep us focussed on the future. My partner could never understand how we could hope for so much with so little to work with. It hurt him to see us hoping, fearful that we would be disappointed.

I never did manage to show him how we could accept the very limited and limiting reality, accept the possibility of failure, look at the future realistically and practically, and yet still hope and work towards that hope.

Without hope there is nothing to aim for, with it you can aim for the stars.