2017 was an unlucky one for me, with the first of five falls over the next 12 months (off my own feet - not off a horse!) that resulted in what I now know as major concussions. As a typical stoic horserider, each time I fell over I didn't think much of it, despite my poor face taking the brunt of the fall because my arms are too weak to stop me going down. I amassed a fair few facial bumps and bruises, with the worst being in May 2017 when I fell over on my front doorstep, broke my nose and tore my calf after crashing down on the concrete!

I didn't realise it until a few days later, but I suffered with pretty severe concussion after that fall (plus the two more after it which compounded the concussion), the effects of which I'm still feeling today, with headaches and vision problems if I spend too long looking at a screen... which proves a bit problematic with my job as a web designer for my web company Wicked Eye!

So I spent a good few weeks of 2017 sporting the black eye look, and having to take life a bit easy to get myself better. Pony time was of course a big part of my recovery, and Tech looked after me like very precious cargo for my first rides back after my enforced breaks from riding, bless him!

As a result of my balance getting worse, I had to start using my wheelchair a lot more at home as opposed to mainly outside the house as I had been doing. Unfortunately our house wasn't set up well for a wheelchair, with a few steps up to the front door, as well as a step up into the hallway to the bedrooms/bathrooms. So we started operation house-tidy-up to get it ready to sell. Thankfully we managed to sell pretty quickly, but it took us another two months to find our new house, which meant we had to move out and gatecrash my parent's place for 6 weeks while we were in between houses! Luckily they have a small one bedroom flat attached to their house, but there's 3 of us (me, hubby and our then-14-year-old son) plus our two big dogs (a german shepherd and a border collie) so poor Mum & Dad had all of us to contend with for a while! 

We moved into our completely flat, fully wheelchair accessible new house on Friday 9th March 2018, but I didn't have much time to settle in as we headed off to Horse of the Year on the Sunday!

HOY 2018 was the last show Tech and I did together. More on that in my next post...