‘Basically a disc moved in my neck and it was about two years later that I started getting pain. It was crippling, I literally couldn’t get out of bed.’
After being told by a doctor the disc could slip at any moment and leave the 31-year-old a paraplegic, the father was forced to make a difficult decision.
‘I was put on an emergency flight from the Gold Coast to Brisbane to see a surgeon,’ he recalls, explaining he was then sent to Sydney for an operation.
‘They rushed me in and put me through surgery. I woke up and I had a big needle and a tube sticking out of my neck.’
While the only reminder of Aaron’s surgery is a scar on the side of his neck, the married couple say they really struggled while making the decision to go ahead with the surgery.
‘It was a 70 per cent likelihood that he would be a paraplegic,’ 38-year-old Daniella explains. ‘So it was one of the hardest decisions of our lives to make, if he was going to have the surgery or not. The other option would have been for Aaron to be medicated for the rest of his life and in pain.
‘We’d had our first child, who was only six months old. Financially, we were stressing because Aaron couldn’t work and we had a baby, and we had to pay hospital bills.’
While Aaron had a tough few months,a healthy Aaron does not regret his decision.
'My body physically couldn’t have kept going with the amount of medication I was taking,’ he says. ‘So we made a decision and I haven’t had any issues since.’