Popular ABC News Breakfast reporter Charles Brice has opened up about the life-changing accident he suffered 11 years ago that left him a quadriplegic.
Brice would be familiar to ABC News Breakfast viewers as the show’s South Australia correspondent, but most would probably be unaware of the accident that caused his disability.
Brice opened up about the accident in a new video for the ABC’s Hack Instagram channel, where he also spoke about what it was like to date in the wake of his injury.
“I went out for a motorbike ride with a few other guys and as it always is the case I was just a few kilometres from home when I had an accident on the motorbike,” he revealed.
“I ended up breaking my neck and that has left me a quadriplegic so not quite the direction I was expecting to take in life.”
Brice was only 19 at the time of the accident, and said that dating afterward had sometimes presented its challenges.
“There were definitely times where I thought ‘S**t, would someone be willing to date me in my situation?’” he explained.
“I was only a few years post my injury so I probably felt a little bit, not embarrassed about my situation, but I figured if I do disclose my disability and show my wheelchair in the photos on the apps I probably wouldn’t have the success rate that able-bodied people would.
“So I didn’t show my wheelchair at first and some people took it really well.”
He did detail one awkward online dating encounter, in which he tried to downplay the severity of his injury by telling a girl that due to his motorcycle accident he “sits down more than the average person.”
Her response? “I’m sorry to hear that, but at least you can walk a little bit.”
“And that was kind of a little bit awkward moment where I had to say to her ‘Look I can’t walk at all’ … She was a trooper, she was great.”
Brice previously went into great detail about his accident and recovery in a patient testimonial published on the Neurological Research Foundation website.
In it, he recalled the terrifying immediate aftermath of the motorcycle crash: “Lying alone on the ground, I realised I couldn’t move. I was the only one in the group with a phone. I tried to reach into my pocket to call for help but I couldn’t,” he wrote.
It was half an hour before he was discovered, taken to the nearest hospital then flown to the Royal Adelaide Hospital and, later that night, informed he had shattered two vertebrae in his neck and completely severed his spinal cord.
“I spent 52 days in the ICU, 21 days in the Spinal Ward at the RAH and then 14-months in rehab,” he revealed.
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More than a decade on, Brice is a successful TV journalist, something he admitted that in the aftermath of his accident “didn’t seem like a possibility.”
“It’s great to have that exposure of disability on TV and for a national audience as well,” he wrote on the NRF website.
“Hopefully it can open up some doors and give hope to other people going through similar circumstances.”
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2023-12-07 00:56:15Z
CBMiqgFodHRwczovL3d3dy5uZXdzLmNvbS5hdS9lbnRlcnRhaW5tZW50L3R2L21vcm5pbmctc2hvd3MvYWJjLXByZXNlbnRlci1jaGFybGVzLWJyaWNlLWRldGFpbHMtYWNjaWRlbnQtdGhhdC1sZWZ0LWhpbS1xdWFkcmlwbGVnaWMvbmV3cy1zdG9yeS82YWIzNzNmNDFmM2IzMTNhNDQzOTU3NWU5NTAxNDRmNNIBAA
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