A School Sports Day Ruined My Life

Leah Was An Everyday Mum Until One Fall Changed Everything

At her son Aidan’s school sports day, Leah Dwyer was happy to get involved and it was a no-brainer that she’d run in the mum’s race. But as she waited at the start line, little did she know this race would set her life on a very unexpected and traumatic path.

“Someone suggested we run backwards,” Leah, now 55, tells New Idea, and so everyone turned around and set off. But about half way down, the Sydney mum remembers she hit a dip in the oval, fell and smacked her head on the ground.

“I was so embarrassed as everyone came running over,” she cringes. “My head hurt, but I got up OK. It was only days later when my neck seized-up I went to see someone.”

A physio confirmed she’d likely suffered whiplash from her fall, but even weeks later it wasn’t resolved and she’d started getting an involuntary muscle spasm down her left side, too.

“I was a regular, busy mum and I had to try and get on with things the best I could,” she says. Her daughter, Ella was just 4 at the time and Aidan who is severely autistic was 6.

It was only months later when Leah was at her GP for a routine appointment that her doctor noticed Leah’s spasms and sent her to a neurologist.

“He diagnosed me immediately with cervical dystonia,” Leah says. “It’s a neuro-muscular condition brought on by physical or emotional trauma and he thought my sports day fall had caused it.”