Ed Jackson credits inspirational rugby figures and hails ‘real power’ of kindness on night of global premiere of The Mountain Within Me
Ed Jackson will be guest of honour at the global premiere of The Mountain Within Me.
Ed Jackson stepped out of Waverley station into a dry Edinburgh afternoon, took a couple of deep breaths and pinched himself.
“I can’t actually get my head around this,” he said as his journey continued on to the city’s International Film Festival where tonight he is guest of honour at the global premiere of The Mountain Within Me.
Jackson is the rugby player who scaled some of the world’s great peaks after suffering a near fatal spinal cord injury which left him paralysed from the shoulders down.
Scary place to be
The former Bath, Doncaster, London Welsh, Wasps and Dragons star whose life changed in a split-second when he dived into the wrong end of a swimming pool and landed on his head.
In Scotland’s capital they have come to watch a story seven years in the making, dating back to one fateful afternoon in 2017 when he lost all feeling in his body and three times had to be resuscitated as he suffered one cardiac arrest after another on his way to hospital.
“To start with it felt like my life had ended,” Jackson says, bluntly. “You catastrophise. It’s a pretty scary place to be.
“Something has happened that you hear of happening to others but never think is going to happen to you. And then it’s the anxiety wrapped up in the uncertainty of what the rest of your life looks like.
“Not just for you, for your family, for (wife) Lois, everyone that’s involved. It also tied in with a lot of guilt. It was stupid mistake, but it took a long time to come to the point of acceptance that it was just a mistake and freak accidents do happen.”
Jackson is now able to view the accident as a “good day”, though not for one minute does he underplay the journey it’s taken to get him to this point of acceptance from where Lois witnessed “real panic” in his eyes.
“In my darkest hours I was scared, angry and confused,” he recalls. “I would put on a brave face for family and friends but I thought my life was over.”
It was at that point he clung to the hope created by Matt Hampson, Henry Fraser and Doddie Weir, rugby men dealt the cruellest hands by fate yet playing them in such inspirational fashion.
Hampson, the England U21 prop paralysed from the neck down and left breathing via the aid of a ventilator, who responded by setting up a foundation which, for the past 13 years, has helped others suffering similar catastrophic injuries.
Fraser, the Saracens academy player who like Jackson was paralysed from the shoulders down in a diving accident, but is now an acclaimed artist, painting with his mouth.
Inspiring Weir
Scotland and Lions legend Weir, who fought motor neurone disease so valiantly for six years whilst raising millions of pounds to fund the search for a cure.
“When you know everything is only going in one direction, no matter how hard you try, to be able to stay positive and have a positive impact on other people is incredibly inspiring,” Jackson says of Weir.
“These stories are what I latched onto early. I did not know Hambo or Henry personally but I knew their stories because of rugby.
“Even when I woke up and couldn’t move from my shoulders down I could still breathe for myself, so I was already, on paper, in a better position than Hambo [Hampson] was physically, and is.
“But you look at him and everything he’s done with his life and the amazing charity he’s created, this life of purpose, and you go, ‘hang on a minute, if he can do it, then why can’t I’?
“If you’ve got people to look up to, like I did, to emulate or just give you hope, it makes a massive difference.”
As Jackson came to terms with his new reality he told his father that if he was going to get better “there’s no point just getting a bit better, I might as well get properly better.”
He decided he “wanted to rewrite the rulebook of what is possible in life” and so began a period of rehabilitation which took him from the depths of despondency to some of the highest peaks in the Himalayas.
Throwing himself into recovery mode he tapped into the example of Aaron Phipps, the British wheelchair rugby Paralympic gold medalist who trained for three years to scale Kilimanjaro, Africa’s tallest mountain, only to find that his wheelchair could not cope.
Australia v South Africa: Springboks ‘B’ team still dominate our combined XV with the Wallabies
So Phipps, whose lower legs and tops of fingers were amputated when he contracted Meningitis C at the age of 15, clambered out of the chair, duck-taped pads to his knees and crawled for four days to reach the summit.
“The guy’s a legend,” says Jackson, who started his own climbing journey on Snowdon, “effectively a walk”, and a few weeks ago graduated to scaling the Matterhorn, that fabled alpine peak rising up 4,478 metres above sea level.
No wonder the film makers came knocking on his door. Which brings us to tonight and the eternal gratitude Jackson feels towards everyone who has helped his fight with adversity.
“We all have a tendency in life to focus on the things that are going wrong,” says the 32-year old. “The News obviously doesn’t help with that.
“But the level of appreciation you get from things getting taken away from you – having to contemplate not being able to walk any more or being resuscitated three times – it truly brings life into full perspective.
“The change for me has been not just saying ‘yes’ to things and following my gut, having the confidence of going for stuff and thinking ‘life’s too short not to’.
“It has actually been the base level of appreciation from where I already am. Having friends and family around me, having food on the table, being able to step over a curb, or drive a car or even feed myself, allows me to be happier on a daily basis.
“My message to everyone is try to focus on the positives. But also just ‘be kind’. Because I’ve experienced so much kindness since my accident.
“Trying to be kind and help others, honestly, has helped me hugely. I think there’s a real power in that.”
READ MORE: All Blacks v Argentina preview: New Zealand set for another ‘nervy’ clash in Auckland