Dusty Wentworth

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...

  The Before and After I spent my life working. I joined the Army at sixteen, and for more than thirty-four years I prided myself on discipline, resilience, and the ability to keep pushing through. Even with a diagnosis of combat-related PTSD and fibromyalgia, I refused to slow down. I turned fifty in 2023—still working, still fighting, still standing. Then, in October 2023, I collapsed at home. That single event didn’t just end my working life; it marked the beginning of an eleven-month nightmare that shattered my identity, fractured my body, and left me questioning everything I thought I knew about myself—particularly my masculinity and my role as a father to three young children. The hospital’s initial diagnosis was Functional Neurological Disorder (FND)—a terrifying condition directly linked to trauma and my long-term PTSD. But during the investigations, a brain scan revealed something unexpected: a brain aneurysm. The doctors at Addenbrooke’s deemed it stable, requiring only m...

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...

What does a man do when his body turns traitor—when his voice vanishes, his muscles shake, and the only strength left is the will to endure? This is my life with Functional Neurological Disorder (FND)—a battle fought not on foreign soil, but within my own skin. Yesterday should have been a day of celebration. My new bespoke wheelchair—a bright orange Quickie Nitrum—had just arrived, coinciding with the first anniversary of my discharge from a neurological rehabilitation centre. But as so often happens now, my body responded to the surge of emotion in a cruel and unpredictable way. By the afternoon, the toll had arrived. Excruciating pain gripped me. My speech was gone entirely. Tremors and muscle spasms rocked my body without mercy. Despite the considerable amount of pain medication I take, the pain always finds a way through. By 01:30, the spasms had become so violent they resembled a seizure. In moments like that, medication is useless. You have to retreat into your mind,...