Some call it luck, others call it fate; if you have eastern leanings then you might describe it as Karma. Whatever you call it, it all comes down to probability- the mathematical chance that really good things or terribly bad things are going to happen. Most people live a vanilla life- they go from cradle to the grave bothering no one, achieving nothing much, it’s all just a bit beige, the universe doesn’t bother them much. Other people achieve: they may achieve greatness, they may perpetrate great evil or they may spend the whole lives helping other people. It doesn’t seem to matter which way you make a difference in life, probability doesn’t care, good things happen to bad people and vice versa…
Enter stage left Miss Gwendolen Spurlock. A bubbly, happy Welsh girl set apart from her teenage peers by her love of surfing. Whilst most girls her age are obsessing on clothes, boys and celebrity she is obsessed with being the best surfer she can be. Which is no bad thing, you can’t be a competitive surfer if you haven’t got the drive to win and winning is something she is particularly good at. In 2007 she claimed three of the four major titles: British junior champion, the UK pro tour women’s champion and the UK tour Junior women’s champion, the only title of note eluding her being the British open champion. To add a polish to the pile of silverware she also landed a tidy sponsorship deal with Animal. Life was, to put it mildly, sweet. With the competition season over the G-Unit stuck her head back into the A-level schoolbooks and laid plans to escape the British winter, not being a major fan of frigid Langland and ice-cream headaches. A couple of weeks on a photo shoot in the Dominican Republic in late January eased the pain and with the flights and boat booked she was all set to hit her dream destination of the Maldives with her best surfing friends on a photo trip in April. Set that is, until the universe metaphorically threw her a curveball, slipped her a mickey or in schoolroom terms pulled her chair out from under her just as she was about to sit down…
It seemed simple enough, a few days at the Swansea leisure centre demoing the new artificial surfing machine, the idea being the local pros would be showing the facility off for the Queen when she visited. Standing on glorified bodyboard on a fast-moving sheet of water over a hard plastic bottom is no easy thing (many of the world’s top pros have injured themselves on similar contraptions) and Gwen, like everyone else, went down hard a number of times.
Gwen takes over the story (the first part of the interview was done in July, when she was still under house arrest, under constant observation, she couldn’t be left alone in case she had a seizure).
“I felt like my body had been jarred a few times, I didn’t hit my head, I fell very hard and my body felt out of line. When we got home Beth and I were really tired, your body just takes slam after slam, I’m not surprised it happened to my head really. I thought I was just dehydrated as I was getting a really bad headache, I figured taking a painkiller would make the headache ease off, but it didn’t. We did four hours on the Wednesday to practice and I just burnt myself out, Thursday was the media day but my neck and my whole body was in shutdown, I didn’t realise the extent of my injury. I didn’t see the Queen either, there was so much pressure in my head Thursday night I thought my head was going to blow up so I couldn’t go down on the Friday. It was horrible, I couldn’t sleep at all. At first the doctor thought I had whiplash, then they thought I had post concussion syndrome, then they thought it was going on a bit too long and sent me for a CT scan. I was really nervous as I’m quite claustrophobic but it was okay as it is just a tube your head goes into. Then came the big shock- I had bleeds on both sides of my brain, and an arachnoid cyst, the cyst was there anyway -they are quite common- but the doctors were worried about the bleed triggering the cyst. I was really angry, I couldn’t believe it happened to me, I thought I would need surgery but the doctor said it should be fine as it wasn’t bleeding near the cyst. If I’d just listened to my body and stopped when I was tired rather than listening to my ego and wanting to practice for the press day to get exposure etc this might not have happened…”
(A good few minutes of tape is not run here as no one’s quite sure what the legal implications are yet, so it’s a bit of a thorny issue)
“… I think it’s fate really, I was supposed to go on a school trip to a university, but my mum didn’t let me go, as I wasn’t well. The hospital phoned two hours after I was supposed to go and said, ‘come straight in, don’t eat anything, don’t drink anything’ and if I’d been on the school trip I would have been in trouble. I was in there by lunchtime and they operated at midnight. They told me that blood had moved my brain by 4 mm. So they drilled both sides of my head to reduce the pressure, which was really high, they showed me a graph and just after my reading is where people start to die. They’ve seen people deteriorate in a couple of hours so they wanted to get it done as soon as possible. The operation was successful, so I thought that was it, they said there was a good chance I might have a seizure but I didn’t, I was in hospital five days then got to go home with two little bald patches and dissolvable stitches covering the holes going down to my brain. My neurosurgeon said to me, ‘the one thing we don’t want is an infection on the inside, as that could infect your brain and that could be deadly’ (much like the brain cavity infection that nearly killed US pro Timmy Turner,Ed). So as I was resting at home I started leaking from one of the holes in my head I freaked and thought it was an infection, but the doctors finally figured it out it wasn’t an infection, it was my brain fluid pumping out because the cyst had been triggered and was pulsing…”
Cue a tea and biscuit break, which, you dear reader, might also need as this story gets a lot worse before it gets better.
“ So I then had to go back to hospital for an MRI scan, they assumed the worst about the cyst but it was fluctuating so they then gave me the option of whether to wait and see what happened or to have an operation. A lot was going through my head at the time, on the one hand I was cynical as the first operation hadn’t gone to plan but I also wanted it sorted out and I’m not the most patient of people so I said yes. The operation had a 75% success rate, but I was assuming the worst, it’s difficult to stay positive. They also had to give me all the warnings- like I might be epileptic afterwards, in which case I wouldn’t be able to drive for a year and there was a very small chance of brain damage. I wasn’t fussed with the details I just wanted it done, I just wanted to be fixed. I went into surgery at 8.30 on Friday morning, they did microscopic surgery and it went well. I was supposed to wake up at 1.30, apparently I did wake up at 1.30, said I felt sick and then passed out again. They rushed me for a CT scan and found out I had a fresh bleed on the other side of my head and took me straight back to theatre for another emergency operation. They didn’t know how I’d react or if I was going to wake up, my pupils were unreactive and -not that I knew- but obviously my family were freaking out as they’d been told I might not wake up again. When I woke up in the evening I twigged something had gone wrong, the surgeon came in and asked me to move my feet, so I kicked them both in the air and he was relieved, they thought I’d be paralysed. He’d only seen that operation go wrong once in ten years, it had to happen to me… Basically they diffused the cyst, which went well, the bleed was just unlucky, I was in intensive care for four days afterwards. I don’t react well to morphine and other painkillers and after the operation I couldn’t eat for three days. Every time I tried to eat or drink anything I would just spew it back up. But I was recovering well and they moved me back to a normal ward, going from intensive care with one nurse to two patients to one nurse to eight patients was quite scary. I then had a relapse, fluid was building up at the back of my head putting pressure on my brain and giving me the worst headache I’ve ever had, it caned so much, every thump was pure agony and I was being sick bile because I had nothing in my stomach, it was awful. They then had to do another operation to relieve the pressure. I lost at least a stone in weight while I was in there. My body was a mess because I’d had four operations and having anaesthetic in your system for that long isn’t good for you. After two weeks in hospital I finally got let home but I had to take iron tablets because I lost so much blood. I had a bulge in my temple at home so I went back to see the surgeon and he freaked out, and I got wheeled in for another scan, by this stage I couldn’t see it ever ending. I thought I’d be going in for another operation. But rather than opening my head up again they gave me a lumbar puncture, which is when they stick a fat needle in your spine, to see what was going on with the spinal fluid. It wasn’t as bad as they thought so I got to go home again, but the swelling was still there, every morning I’d wake up and it would be really hard and as the day went on it would go soft, like a daily cycle as the fluid reabsorbed. But slowly but surely it’s got better so I hope that’s the end with the swelling. It’s been okay for two weeks now”
Medical ickyness aside two weeks of operations and no hair care –hard to brush and condition your locks when you’ve got fresh wounds in your swede- left one final bit of awfulness…
“After all the surgery my hair was so knotted, a big nasty dread, I had to get my hair cut, I was so upset, yet another thing caused by the accident.”
I suggest she could have kept it and become a crusty but it didn’t go down very well. Things then get a bit philosophical.
“It’s just materialistic, hair grows back, being in intensive care is a big wake-up call, it’s really upsetting, the guy next to me had the same thing in his head as me but he was paralysed, before he knocked his head falling down some stairs he was fine. I think everything happens for a reason, it’s a bad thing that happened but imagine if it happened somewhere without a decent health system, on a trip somewhere, if I’d been in Indo and hit my head and the cyst activated I would be dead. So in a way it’s good it happened now and I’ve got it sorted now while I’m young. That’s the way you’ve got to look at it. But it’s hard not to be down, my life’s been on hold the last four months, I haven’t been to school, I haven’t been out with my friends, I’ve not been in the sea and I haven’t surfed since the middle of February. I took what I had for granted and having it taken away from you makes you realise how lucky we are. I just can’t wait to get my old life back on track, I miss competing so much, I miss being able to surf, if I was stressed I knew I could just go surfing and forget about it, when I’m stressed now I just want to hit my head against a wall. Surfing is the main thing in my life I wanted to do and that main thing has been taken away. I miss just chucking the boards in the car and going for a surf with Beth, you know how we are, singing and hugging each other in the line up, just having fun and having a good time. Not being able to compete has been a big thing. Last year was a good year and I was really looking forward to 2008, it sounds materialistic but I love winning and I hate losing, and I’m a bad loser but I am getting better about it. Everything happens for a reason and this has just made me stronger and more determined. I just need to make sure my head is better. I’m just grateful that I am here at the moment… and there are a lot of other people in far worse situations than me.”
Roll forward to early August. A month has passed since we did the interview. Gwen is still stuck at home, the disappointment of missing the Maldive trip she organised has gone away. Best mates Beth Mason and Tassy Swallow are having a wild time in Europe doing the Pro Junior series and loving life; Gwen should be with them. No ones quite sure what’s going on, once the NHS fixes you that’s kind of it, leading to my weekly question, ‘So when can you surf again?’ the answer always, ‘Don’t know, no ones telling me anything’…
On the 7th of August that all changed, a text beeped its way onto my phone, simple, to the point and short, much like Gwen-
‘I can surf again! lol x’
postscript: Gwen's now fully back in the game having recently won the Welsh Junior Title and British Junior title… She surfs with a helmet to protect her noggin which makes a lot of sense...
