Danny Biddle, Estimator, writes movingly about his life since the 7 July bombings.

I returned to work in September 2006, 14 months after very nearly losing my life in the 7th July bomb attacks on the London Underground at Edgware Road station. What I did lose were my legs, my left eye, my spleen and the hearing in my left ear. Unfortunately, the list goes on but I won’t go into that here.

What I would like to go into is the help and support I have had, and continue to have from Kenyon’s. After the attack I spent eight weeks in intensive care. For six of those weeks I was in a coma. When I was finally moved onto a ward and all the tubes where removed I could finally talk, a blessing for me but not for others!

Lying in hospital covered in scars, my legs gone, blind in one eye, I couldn’t help but wonder where my life was going. I thought “Obviously I can’t go back to work, who would want this in their office”. The thing you have to remember is that I only started at Kenyon’s on the 25th April 2005, I had only been here for 3 months when this happened, I never thought it would be possible to return to work.

I had so many messages wishing me well from friends and colleagues at Kenyon’s.

Unless you spend a long time in hospital (in my case 51 weeks) you can’t appreciate how much a card, a phone call or a visit means. I will always be grateful to Sam, Richard, Zane, Caz and Luana for their visits, they made me feel I could still be of use and that I was still a part of something.

One day Richard and Sam told me that there was a job there for me to come back to whenever I was ready to return. That day really kick-started my recovery. It gave me the incentive to push myself harder than I had needed to before. The thing about being an amputee is that it can take a long time to get used to it. For me, though, it didn’t. Because I knew how close I had come to dying, I thought it’s time to start living. Yes, it’s horrible to always be in a wheelchair. Yes, there isn’t a day goes by that I wish I hadn’t got on that train. But the fact is I did, and nothing is ever going to change that fact.

Physical injuries heal, they scar and eventually fade. The mental injuries don’t, they remain. Even now I can still recall the scene in that tunnel, I can still smell the horrors from down there, every night I can still hear the screams of the injured and the dying.

Kenyon’s have helped me deal with the mental trauma, that talk with Richard and the visits from Sam and Aurora gave me the incentive to carry on with my CIOB course from hospital and to go on to start my HNC. I’m now working with Zane, Kev and Julian, which means that my thoughts are always occupied with work or college, I always have something else to think about other than that God-awful day.

I am a very lucky man. Firstly, because I have survived something that all the doctors told my family I would die from and, secondly, that the company I work for didn’t write me off and put me on the scrap heap. I have seen the worst in people and also the best, sometimes more than I ever thought possible.

I don’t think I could’ve come through this in the manner I have without everyone’s continuing support. The memories of that day will never leave me. Dealing with it has been made easier with the support I’ve had from everyone at Kenyon’s.

To Richard, Sam, Aurora, Zane and everybody at Kenyon’s, thank you so much for helping me get to where I am today.

Danny Biddle, ACIOB
Estimator