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This will be my first ever blog and I’m proud to be blogging about basketball for IWBF at the Europeans and hopefully on the road to 2012.

I started playing wheelchair basketball when I was 15 and have been disabled since birth.

I was born with one leg shorter than the other (PFFD) and had 20 or so operations from the age of 3 to 15 to try and correct the defecit between my legs. Unfortunately, as my condition is so rare (about one in a million) my surgeries were still quite experimental and not all terribly successful. I spent most of my summer holidays in and out of hospital to correct issues that arose after surgery. I had three leg lengthening procedures where the doctors broke my femur and put pins either side with an external frame. I had to use an allan key on the frame every day to make the gap between the bone bigger for new bone to grow over about a six month period. Sadly for all the doctor’s hard work I’ve always been pretty headstrong and boisterous and so after the first frame came off I twisted the new bone dancing, the next time they tried to prevent this from happening by putting me in plaster but I just broke my leg instead!

The doctors hadn’t realised that my condition affected my entire right leg leaving all the bones and joints deformed and so the surgeries I was undergoing were pulling hip out of the socket. So after the third leg lengthening surgery when I was 10 my hip dislocated and I spent the next three years walking around on a leg the doctors were convinced I wouldn’t be able to walk on. I think the right phrase would be no sense no feeling because apparently that should be too painful!

Once my hip had been fixed I went back to the doctor’s to talk about more leg lengthening surgery. At this meeting I was told the surgeries would become more complicated with a lesser chance of success. My mum asked about the possibility of amputating my foot, something I’d been trying to avoid happening, but having thought about it properly I decided it was the best course of action and in May 2006 I had my right leg amputated. Again being the headstrong person I am I left the hospital 3 days after my surgery which was about  a week earlier than the doctors’ usual prediction!

Going back to school I’d heard one of the other girls had started to play wheelchair basketball and had been talking about how she was going to go to the Paralympics. Hearing this brought out my uber competitive side and I decided I was going to go along to the local club too and prove that I could play. From the very first session I fell in love with basketball. I loved how fast paced the game was having never been able to play sport at school through fear of breaking my leg it was so much fun to get to mess around and hit other people’s chairs without fear of getting hurt.

I  started playing in January 2007 and kept going to the weekly sessions until October when one of the guys at the club told me about a junior championsips. He helped me find a team to play for and I played my first every game.  I was sat in a guard’s chair and my team didn’t do very well (I was top scorer with 2 points!) but I had a great time and just wanted to keep playing. That weekend I met Clare Strange one of my GB teammates who asked my to play for her women’s league team and the rest, as they say, is history.

Since then I’ve been to two Paralympic World Cups, one Europeans, one Worlds and one U25s Championships. The European Championships in Israel will be a great time for the team and a fantastic tournament in the lead up to London 2012. I have loved playing basketball for my country through the highs and the lows and I can’t wait to be around for more of the good times.