A COUPLE from Bury have spoken for the first time of how a rehab programme - set up in the wake of the Manchester Arena bombing - has helped them to rebuild their lives.

Manchester Airport driver Gary Blamire 56, and his wife Dianne, 52, from Bury, were two people whose lives were forever changed by the atrocity.

His leg was shattered in the blast while Dianne also suffered injuries, albeit more minor.

But they later benefitted from a pioneering initiative which was set up by Dr Jason Wong and Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust

Strangers stopping and asking questions, well-intentioned but difficult to answer, was just one thing the couple were forced to adjust to.

Neither Gary or Dianne have spoken widely about their experiences at Manchester Arena three years ago.

But they’ve chosen to share their experiences now, saying they wanted to pay tribute to the ‘fantastic’ specialists they met as part of the  ground-breaking rehabilitation programme for those injured in the attack.

Bringing together expertise from across Greater Manchester, the programme encapsulated the spirit of the city in the weeks and months after the attack – grieving but united and resilient.

The landmark scheme was overseen by Dr Wong, who is based at the Manchester Institute of Health and Performance (MIHP) - and chiefly funded by WeLoveManchester – the public fund set up in the wake of the tragedy.

The couple relayed their story just after Gary had undergone his last sessions at the institute, which saw the frame, holding his leg in place since he was first injured, finally taken off.

Although he says his mobility isn’t yet where it was before the attack, he’s now taking the family dog out for regular walks and jokes he and Dianne can be found at the local gym on a Friday night.

It’s a far cry from the situation he found himself in during May 2017.

The couple had been waiting for their daughter in the foyer of Manchester Arena when they were caught up in the attack.

Gary managed to shield his wife from the severity of the blast, but his leg was shattered.

His watch was smashed off his wrist, fracturing the bone on both sides, while the blast also left a gash in his mouth, knocking out several teeth.

He waited, unable to move from the floor of the foyer.

His wife suffered more minor injuries to her leg – catching some shrapnel – and went to find their teenage daughter, who she located outside the arena.

Two-and-a-half hours later, Gary was in the back of an ambulance being rushed to Manchester Royal Infirmary (MRI).

Gary, who worked as a driver at Manchester Airport, thinks it was ‘touch and go’ as to whether he would have lost his leg, saying the doctors at MRI told him it was one of the worst shin injuries they had seen that night.

When they look back on the events, the pair say they can’t quite believe what happened.

“People think things like that couldn’t happen to them and then, it does,” Dianne, a finance director, says.

Prior to the concert, the family had debated the safety of upcoming trips to London and Turkey.

Back in 2017, several cities across Europe had seen devastating terrorist atrocities and the UK’s threat level had been upgraded to severe months before.

“We were having discussions about both of those things, but never about going into Manchester on a Monday night to pick our daughter up from a concert,” Dianne says.

“I suppose that’s the reason why it shouldn’t stop you doing anything, should it? Because you never know when anything’s going to happen.”

She remembers the first few days and weeks after the attack as a blur of appointments, where simple tasks suddenly became much more challenging.

While Gary was in his wheelchair, Dianne had also suffered injuries that required hospital treatment and the pair had two teenage kids to look after.

A constant stream of hospital visits – ‘I think we’ve been to every hospital in the north west’ – was particularly daunting to two people who rarely went to the doctors.

Dianne said: “Everything just seemed a massive thing.

“It seems a bit bizarre to say it but, Gary could barely walk. You think – how are we going to get out to get to a hospital appointment?

“I don’t know, I suppose it’s just the way you cope with a massive trauma, isn’t it? And then to think, what are normally very simple things and easy things to do become very big.”

Work, friends, neighbours and family were all understanding and helpful, Dianne said, but once the couple were able to go out, some strangers would come up and bombard the pair with questions about Gary’s injury.

As the months passed, they tried to live life as normally as possible – helped by their two teenage children, Dianne says.

“In the early days I used to wheel Gary round the Trafford Centre. I walk quite quickly and having a wheelchair didn’t slow me down. We went to the Trafford Centre not long after because our daughter wanted to go – because things carry on with kids, especially at that age.

“She was going on a school trip that summer so we had to go.

“I think when we told friends they were amazed that we had gone to the Trafford Centre.

“We’ve never been worried about going there but I know a lot of people don’t like the thought of going because they think it’s a risky place for a potential attack.

“I never think of it like that – you probably wouldn’t go anywhere. I think they thought that was really brave. Whereas we were like ‘oh yeah, just going for some clothes, whizzing round in a wheelchair’.”

At the time, Gary was getting seen at local hospitals. He says the staff were great but the facilities – compared to what he was about to see at the MIHP – could be basic.

But behind the scenes, Dr Wong was pulling together an ambitious project that saw the NHS team up with the MIHP and bring together sports scientists, doctors and sports medicine practitioners.

When it was up and running, the MIHP team organised a number of meetings with university biomechanics experts, physios, occupational therapists and experts involved in elite athletic care – including those working with Manchester City, Paralympians and British Tae-kwon-do – to gather as much information as possible and to create a bespoke programme for each patient.

Only Gary initially started rehabilitation work at the MIHP. But when Dianne was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, specialists suggested she start sessions, too.

She would go along to the pilates classes and the specialists set up joint sessions for the pair – creating competitions between them to help spur on their recovery.

When Gary started his programme, he said his ankle was ‘locked’ with very little movement and his leg was initially held together by a metal frame.

As the weeks went on, the physios were able to use high-tech sporting technology to track his progress.

He’d walk along a running track with reflective stickers on his legs – specialists would be able to track exactly how much pressure he was putting on his leg, and monitor his walking pattern.

And once his frame was off, he was able to use an anti-gravity treadmill, that zipped him in and lifted him off the ground. The specialists could then adjust how much of his body weight he would work on.

Gary also says the physios drew up an individual programme for him that ‘pushed him to the limit’.

“We’d have a bit of cardio to do, then a bit of a circuit. She kept it interesting. Each time you went you’d have a different circuit for you to do so we’d end up doing boxing, press ups, the plank. They’d be tough classes, you’d be dripping in sweat – they didn’t take it easy on you.”

Gary says that he’d always hoped he’d made a full recovery, but thinks that the doctors are impressed by quite how far he has come.

“I’m not quite 100 per cent  there but the improvement to when they first show you to when you’re leaving – it’s amazing. They said, the movement in your ankle, it’s fantastic.

“Although it’s not quite right there, it’s a hell of a lot better. I think they’re amazed. But I suppose you’re a bit ignorant, because I don’t know what to expect and what the difficulties are – but obviously they do,” he said.

Despite the terrible events that Gary and Dianne witnessed, they describe themselves as fortunate that they were able to use the facilities in the MIHP.

“We’ve seen a few footballers,” says Gary.

“You’re quite often in the gym and will see the British cycle team there, the netball team,” Dianne added.

Dr Wong says that the programme involved a huge amount of co-ordination between organisations in the region.

He added: “We had support from the town hall, CCGs, everyone was behind the idea of doing something positive – especially the clinicians, occupational therapists, they understood the reason why it had to be done.

“Even from the elite athlete perspective, people gave their time because they realised the benefit. The collaboration across different disciplines in Greater Manchester can be a really powerful thing and you shouldn’t be scared of it.”

Funding totalling £200,000 came from the NHS, with a further £350,000 coming from the WeLoveManchester fund.

And Dianne says the support provided later down the line worked out well. The first few months were a blur of health appointments but then, the support can drop off.

She says: “You’ve got a period where the weeks go by, and if you’re not doing that much… it sort of gives you somewhere to go.”

The couple have got to know other people who were injured in the attack, and have grown close to the physios who they were seeing up to three times a week at one point,

“You do feel very cared for, they’re watching out for you and they’ve got your best interests at heart. They’ve just been very supportive to both of us. We do feel fortunate,” she says.

Gary says: “The length of time I’ve been coming here, I’ve not once woke up and thought ‘urgh, I’ve got physio in the morning’. I’ve wanted to go – that must say a lot.”

Dr Wong says he’s received similar responses from a lot of people on the scheme.

“It gave them structure when their worlds had been turned upside down – one individual said it changed his life,” he said.

As well as helping out with the physical recovery, emotional support was provided to patients through a network of optional mental health advice services.

This included a local psychology team, as well as the ‘Resilience Hub’ – including a Samaritans-style hotline run by the NHS that was set up specifically for anyone who’d been directly affected by the attack.

Dr Wong also said the team could help out with more practical aspects of the patients’ lives.

“We got people back to work, through the occupational therapists. And we’d fight their case for them to keep their jobs. We gave them a lot of tools to get back to society where they had really withdrawn from society and given them that crutch,” he said.

The occupational therapists on-hand guided patients on techniques that would help them work as before without causing further injury.

“Occupational therapists have an incredibly important role in this – you can have all the physio that you like but if you’re not confident and don’t have the tools and coping mechanisms, then you don’t go back to work,” Dr Wong says.

The programme, he says, is an example of the region at its best.

“It is a good example of how people were driven by something that was really quite catastrophic in Greater Manchester to do something really positive and that permeated through a whole raft of different people.

“To a lot of people’s surprise, the gains that we got were even more that we could hope for.

“It shows that you shouldn’t give up hope on what you can achieve and there are ways to get people better. It gives people hope. And it has changed the outcome of these individuals in ways that can’t be imagined.”

The project came to an end earlier this year when the last patient – Gary – completed his final session.

He says he still gets tired out more than he used to and misses the long walks he used to take with his wife on the beach with their dog. But, he says, he remains optimistic about his recovery.

Dr Wong hopes now that the programme will be further rolled out to help people who’ve been injured in other traumatic events – road traffic accidents or major falls.