We've got mice!

Aside from an operation on my back that left me with an open wound for two years, requiring daily packing with seaweed*, life and health in my early twenties was great.

Not only did I have the privilege of adding the title of both Husband and Dad to my Friends Reunited** profile, my career was also going from strength to strength and I worked with some great friends, colleagues and mentors who, as a group, constantly challenged each other (usually involving a mountain or two).

Buoyed by benefits of youth and a definite lack of foresight, I made an agreement with Michelle (my much better half) that, should I manage to summit Mt. Kilimanjaro, I'd take the leap and venture out on my own.

At 7.20am on the 8th Febraury 2003 I arrived, along with my colleagues, at Uhuru peak, some 19,350ft above sea level and known locally as the roof of Africa. Several months later I was handing in my pass, handing back the company car, saying goodbye to pensions and, most ironically, saying goodbye to private healthcare.

Under pressure...

Running your own business comes with a lot of hidden pressure and additional work so, a couple of months in, when I kept getting headaches and earache, it was easy to put it down to the stress and strain of being a start-up.

Another few months and a couple of bouts of vertigo nudged me into the GP's office, but again the questions of being under any additional stress of late gave a quick answer to my symptoms.

About six months in I awoke one morning with a blocked ear, the type where you can hear your voice echoing round your head. Another embarrassing GP visit, followed by a series of drops, syringing and anti-biotics didn't shift it and my doctor was soon running out of options, with NHS referrals expectantly slow.

A year in, and a couple of referrals later, suggestions pointed to the fact that it may just be the onset of deafness associated with OI, for which there was no cure but, as I could still hear in both ears, only time would tell.

Silence is sometimes the best answer...

Three years in and the endless headaches and autophony has led to a growing lack of conversation on my part wherever possible, not an ideal trait for a Husband, Dad or for someone looking to inspire others to spend money.

"Pardon?", "Speak Up!", "You talk awfully quiet." all regular comments made by family, friends, employees, clients and others.

A return to the GP prompted various referrals, alongside theories of Labyrinthitis, Ménière's disease and a host of other hard to Google inner ear conditions.

Wake Up!

And it was about that time, one evening, laying awake in the small hours of the morning that I heard scurrying. 'Carefully' waking Michelle we both lay, wide awake, listening for the scurry of small feet.

"There!"

"Nope didn't hear anything."

"There!"

"Nope"

"There!"

After several nights of 'human and mouse' it finally dawned on me, thanks to the stern words of warning not to wake Michelle again, that it was only I that could hear the scurrying and scratching.

Turns out that the noise was the sound of my eyeballs moving in their sockets, another symptom that caused the medical fraternity to shake their heads in disbelief. Was I going mad?

The dishes won't do themselves.

Four years in and I was literally sick of my own voice, returning home most evenings to spend it sat by the toilet vomiting from the headaches, laying awake most nights, listening to the mice in my head, and wondering if and when this would all end.

But it was also in year four that some new symptoms arrived that would invariably help the current consultant make her breakthrough diagnosis that would ultimately save my life (or my sanity at the very least).

The first was to do with the washing up. Certainly the best possible excuse for not doing the dishes, or putting them away, but it turned out that the sound of crockery 'clacking' together would make me go funny, almost weak at the knees.

And it was around the same time I was calling a colleague in France that I noticed the european ring tone made my eyes wobble!

These symptoms, along with a few more tests to confirm her suspicions, soon had Dr Dolores Umapathy offering her opinion and diagnosis; a dehiscent superior semicircular canal (basically a crack in one of my inner ear canals that was short-circuiting my brain).

At this point the diagnosis was so rare that it had only first been described in a medical journal a few years earlier by a professor in the United States, and I was one of the only cases diagnosed in the UK.

Treatment in the UK was at the early stages, but thankfully a professor from London (who'd spent time in the US with the professor who'd discovered the condition) and a team of neurologists at the Manchester Centre of Clinical Neurosciences (MCCN) stepped forward to carry out the surgery required to try and fix me.

Fast forward another few months, and the fifth year of symptoms, and I finally underwent a Middle-Fossa Craniotomy to repair the dehiscent canal which saw them remove a small part of my skull, grinding it up to make a paste, before lifting the brain and using the paste to plug the crack (a kind of medical 'no more gaps' solution). The remaining hole then covered with a titanium plate and screws.

Without it I wasn't me...

Several days later I was out of ICU and back home in the spare room to recover, with just thirty or so staples up the side of my head as a souvenir. The whole operation had been recorded to share with other neurosurgeons*** and, over the coming weeks, I'd undergo various post-op tests and present my story to various medical groups on behalf of Dr Umapathy before normality resumed.

But for some reason normality didn't bounce back for me as quick as it did for everyone else. The anxiety that followed every cough and sneeze, the occasional bout of autophony caused by swelling as my head recovered. The strange sensation in my jaw (turned out they cut your jaw muscle in order to carry out the procedure) and across my head (turns out they bolt your head to the operating table in case you have a seizure mid-procedure).

But most of all I still didn't want to speak much and people still asked me to constantly repeat myself or to speak up. I'd also say, since the operation, I've been less emotional.

It was roughly two years until I felt 'normal', during which time the desire to get my hair cut had dropped to the same level as my desire to run my own business, with the wake of seven years trying to run one whilst slowly going insane still washing up behind.

A good world needs brave people...

But the reason for the post is that, without the tenacity of Dr Umapathy, the confidence of Prof. Ramsden, Mr Rutherford and the neurology team at MCCN, I really don't know where/if I'd be today, the latter thought made all the more grounding as I awoke, post-op, in ICU.

In the bed beside me lay a 19-year-old lad who'd had special plates inserted into his head to try and combat a number of growing tumours in his brain, across from me someone in recovery from brain surgery following a car-accident that morning. And beyond the doors of ICU on the red ward, countless more individuals relying on this team of people to save their lives.

The brain is still very much unknown and, since my operation, I've found an increasing number of friends and colleagues whose direct family have been treated by, and benefited from, the amazing neurological team at MCCN.

The team at MCCN really do perform miracles, or at least try their very best. And that's why they're on the list for the TwoTwelve.

About The TwoTwelve

On the 11th September, Spencer Fosbrooke and I will set off on a 12 day hike, covering 212 miles, from the Irish sea on the West coast of England, to the North Sea on the East coast, raising money and awareness for a range of charities who provide research, respite and recovery for disabilities both visible and hidden and both physical and mental.

From mountains to moorland we'll be navigating our way across the country, discussing our own personal experiences with disability whilst also listening to the stories of others, from charity ambassadors to authors , from army veterans to seven-time world record holders.

By challenging ourselves, and through the stories shared, we also hope to challenge the stereotypes, stigmas and silence that often surround both physical and mental health.

We hope you'll support us in our endeavour via our JustGiving page here and if you'd like to get involved in some way, shape or form, please email us at [email protected].

* Okay it was seaweed based but that's about the highlight of that dance.

** Could've been Bebo or MySpace, not sure.

*** I never did pluck up the courage to ask to watch