A man took his partner’s child to a shopping centre to play on the trampolines. Although he walked in a healthy man, he was carried out as a paraplegic one.

It was Sunday the 29 of November around midday when 38-year-old Antonio Robledo Díaz convinced his partner that it was a good idea to visit the installations in Altitude Trampoline Park in Málaga, and would be fun, and fun it was until he landed badly and fractured a vertebra in his neck leaving him unable to walk.

“Go tell your mum; tell her to come,” he told the boy and when she did Antonio asked her to cross his legs so that he could sit up, but she refused, fearing that to move him would cause more damage. She was right; it would have. Staff at the park had phoned 061 and an ambulance was on its way.

In the meantime a nurse who had been shopping with the husband and child tried to attend to him. The victim told her that his right arm hurt and that he could taste blood in his month. She took the man’s partner, Eva, to one side and told her that these symptoms were typical of a spinal-cord, neck injury. His arm hurt because it was the only part of his body that he could feel.

When the paramedics arrived they were presented with a problem – they couldn’t risk climbing onto the trampoline because the movement could cause him more injury or worse. So they called in the fire service.

The complicated manoeuvre to get him off the trampoline and get him safely into the ambulance took over an hour. As soon as they had, they rushed him then to Hospital Carlos Haya.

The X-ray confirmed that he had fractured his fifth vertebra (C5). He required two operations; the first through his throat to place a prosthesis and the second through the back of the neck to insert a plate with 8 screws holding it in place between the C4 and C6.

Before the operations he could only move his right arm down to his wrist. The surgeons told him that after the operation he would lose even that capability and because of the duration of the operation he could catch an infection. He did, pneumonia. However, he remains sedated and unconscious.

He has been moved to the Hospital Nacional de Parapléjicos in Toledo, specialised in spinal injuries.

Antonio’s parents and his partner, Eva, followed him up there but spent the night sleeping in an Xsara Picasso car, despite the cold outside, because they just didn’t have the money to stay anywhere else. The following night they slept under a roof, however, thanks to one of the volunteers belonging to an association for people with spinal injuries.

In the meantime the owner of Altitude Trampoline Park, Sergio Tiedeke, together with all the staff there sent the family 500 euros to help cover expenses whilst the elderly parents remained in Toledo.

In a split second, something like this turns your world on its head, and what little you had, becomes a distant memory in your new desolate present.

(News: Costa del Sol, Malaga, Andalucia)