Dusty Wentworth

One of the hardest parts of my recovery has not been PTSD, fibromyalgia, Functional Neurological Disorder, or even surviving a ruptured brain aneurysm. Those things are visible enough. They can be named, diagnosed, measured, medicated, explained. The real fight has been with masculinity. Not in the abstract, but in my own life, my own body, and my own sense of self. That fight came in two parts. Waking Up in the Future After my aneurysm rupture, I regained consciousness with significant memory loss. Doctors, nurses, and family kept telling me I was fifty years old. In my head, I was still in my mid thirties. I had not aged into this stage of life. I had arrived in it without warning or preparation. It felt less like recovery and more like waking up in the future. If someone had asked me in my thirties whether I would like to time travel fifteen years forward, I would probably have said yes. You expect things to improve. You assume progress. Instead, I woke into a reality th...

Resilience is often described as the ability to endure, to withstand pressure, to keep going when circumstances are hostile or uncertain. Yet for those who have had their lives interrupted by illness, injury or profound loss, resilience is not an abstract concept. It becomes a daily practice, a series of deliberate choices, and at times a hard won act of defiance against despair. Over the past two years, resilience has been the central theme of my life. It has shaped how I have faced the consequences of neurological injury, institutional barriers and the quiet erosion of confidence that prolonged dependence can bring. This is a reflection on that period, and on my determination to rebuild. In October 2023, I became an inpatient. What was initially a hospital admission extended into a prolonged stay and then into a neurological rehabilitation centre. From October 2023 through to September 2024, my world narrowed to wards, treatment rooms and carefully scheduled routines. Reh...

The New Year is quietly under way. It is Saturday 3 January 2026, and as I write this, snow is falling steadily outside my window. It is one of those calm, unmistakably beautiful moments that winter sometimes offers. I am thankful that I have nowhere I need to be today. Snow and wheelchairs do not mix well, and what appears peaceful from indoors can very quickly become dangerous outside. This stillness feels symbolic. With the turning of the year has come a change in how I view my life. This is not because circumstances have suddenly become easy, but because something fundamental has shifted. For the first time in a long while, I am not simply surviving. I am beginning to look forward. That shift has been slow, hard-won, and costly. From collapse to survival My journey over the past few years began in October 2023 when I collapsed at home. What followed was not a single event but an extended fight to stay alive. I spent eleven months moving between hospital wards and a spec...

I live in Norfolk, a beautiful corner of the United Kingdom where the land opens wide and the sky has room to breathe. Norfolk is a county known for the Broads, for its long coastline and quiet beaches, and for those great open skies that teach a man to look up and measure his days by light and weather. It is a place that does not rush you, a place that asks you to stand still and listen. Despite the weight I carried from military service and the long shadow of PTSD, and despite a relatively new diagnosis of fibromyalgia, life was good. I lived simply and happily with my wife and our three children. We were rooted in routine, laughter, and the small honest moments that make a family whole. I believed I knew the shape of my life, and I was content to walk its line. In October 2023, without warning, I collapsed at home. One moment I was steady on familiar ground, the next I was gone. I was rushed to hospital, where doctors diagnosed Functional Neurological Disorder, linking i...

One year ago, as Christmas lights flickered across Norfolk, I sat in my wheelchair staring at a stack of unanswered job adverts. The season felt distant, muffled by exhaustion and uncertainty. I was no longer thinking about celebration. I was thinking about survival. In October 2023, I collapsed and was taken to hospital. I was diagnosed with Functional Neurological Disorder. Scans also revealed a brain aneurysm. I was told it was stable. At the time, the focus was on managing the FND symptoms that had abruptly dismantled my independence. I was transferred to a neurological rehabilitation centre as part of my treatment. In April 2024, while still there, the aneurysm ruptured. What followed was a subarachnoid haemorrhage, a four-week coma, and a life that did not resume where it left off. Independence evaporated. Simple tasks became logistical exercises. I was left living with the consequences of brain injury, severe PTSD from military service, fibromyalgia, Functional Neuro...

Two years ago, my life changed in an instant. I had no idea that one ordinary morning would mark the beginning of a journey that would test every part of who I am. October 23rd, 2023 — a date that changed my life forever. It began like any other day, until suddenly it wasn’t. I collapsed without warning at home. When the ambulance arrived, stroke was ruled out, but that was only the beginning of what would become a long and life-altering journey. Doctors didn’t think I’d survive. Yet somehow, I did. ‎ The Eleven-Month Inpatient Battle What followed were eleven long months as an inpatient — three different hospitals, two stints at a Neurological Rehabilitation Centre, and countless challenges along the way. I was fighting battles not only for my health, but for my identity, my independence, and ultimately, my future. Those months were some of the hardest of my life. Every day brought new challenges: learning to move again, to speak clearly, to remember, to rebuild. The neuro...

There are moments in life when everything fractures – your identity, your memories, your body. When you're not just changed, you're remade. For me, that moment was the rupture of a brain aneurysm – a subarachnoid haemorrhage that erased 14 years of my life and reshaped everything I thought I knew about myself. I woke up in a hospital bed unable to walk, unable to remember much of my adult life, and unable to recognise the man I had once been. And so began the slow, gruelling journey of becoming someone new. A Life Interrupted Before the aneurysm, I had been many things – infantry soldier, bodyguard, husband, father, protector. I'd survived war zones, lived with PTSD, managed chronic pain, and kept moving forwards. But none of that prepared me for this. The aneurysm didn't just threaten my life, it rewrote it. Functional Neurological Disorder, fibromyalgia, partial blindness, tremors, and cognitive damage became my daily reality. My body no longer obeyed me. ...

Surviving the rupture changed everything — now I live in a body I barely recognise, searching for meaning in the wreckage. The doctors didn’t expect me to survive my subarachnoid haemorrhage. Some days, I wish I hadn’t. At 36, I was a fit, strong infantry soldier. At 50, I woke blind in one eye, unable to walk, with more than 14 years of my life erased. Survival didn’t mean carrying on with life as it was. It meant waking into a stranger’s body, holding memories that don’t feel like mine, and living with pain that never lets up. The Hole in My Timeline I don’t remember getting married. I don’t remember my children being born. These are the moments most fathers carry as treasures — and for me, they are emptiness. I look at wedding photos and see a stranger in my place. I hear stories of my children’s milestones and can’t recall a second of them. For me, those memories don’t exist. People pressured me: “Do you remember this? Do you remember that?” as if badgering me could som...

There are moments in life that mark a significant turning point—not because of what you gain, but because of what you finally accept. For me, designing my own wheelchair with Paul from the Mobility Centre was one of those profound moments. Let me explain. After a sudden brain aneurysm, months of grueling rehab, and grappling with memory loss and a diagnosis of Functional Neurological Disorder, one question haunted me: “Who am I now?” It wasn’t just about what I could or couldn’t do, but about my very essence. Looking in the mirror, I saw a stranger. I’d lost my past—and with it, the continuity of my identity. Becoming disabled didn’t just take away my movement; it stripped away everything I thought defined me. So, when I found myself designing a new wheelchair, it wasn’t merely a practical appointment. It was a declaration. When I was first discharged into a Centre for Neurological Rehabilitation, I faced a daunting 30-week wait for NHS wheelchair services. I simply couldn’...