A dad-of-two  from Minnis Bay who suffered major injuries after falling from a roof in September 2021 will set out on a three day walk along the Viking Coastal Trail from Friday [November 1] to raise funds for Air Ambulance Charity Kent Surrey Sussex (KSS).

Andy Constable, 56,  had to learn to walk again and adapt how he used his left hand after breaking 23 bones – five places in his back , two in his femur, his hip and pelvis and all the ribs on his left side – as well as puncturing his lung and losing his wedding ring finger.

Now he wants to raise money to support the KSS team and help with the costs of flying future patients to serious trauma hospitals.

Andy, who is a builder, said: “It was September 23, 2021, and I was doing some volunteer work at Margate Football Club. I’d just finished my job and picked up my tools and was going to put the ladder on the van. I saw I’d left my impact drive on the edge of the roof and so I nipped up the ladder to get it and I don’t remember anything else.

“I found out later the hook on the bottom of the ladder was sheared but I don’t know if I fell away from the roof or through it as it had a hole in it.”

Paramedics were called in and worked on Andy, as did his friend, also called Andy, who was a critical care staff member.

A decision was made that Andy would need to be flown to either King’s College Hospital or East Grinstead. He was taken by road to QEQM Hospital and then KSS transferred him to King’s College.

At King’s Andy went into surgery for more than nine hours.

He said: “They literally put me back together. One team was working on my hand and had to stitch it back together as there was no hope of saving the finger.”

Andy had to have metal rods and a dynamic hip screw from his femur through to his pelvis.

He said: I was in King’s for 10 days.  They said I would be in there for up to three weeks but I just wanted to get home.

“I don’t remember much as I had been given a huge dose of ketamine to keep me going until I got to the hospital.

“I had a wheelchair for a period of time but I didn’t want to be in that too long. Then I had crutches so I had one ‘armrest’ crutch because I couldn’t hold anything as my my fingers were in a splint, and one normal crutch.

“I got up and did little things around the house after about three months, just trying to see if I could do stuff, but didn’t go back to work for about nine months. Even then I was just doing small things. So, before I was doing summer houses and extension but after I was changing doorknobs and would only do about two hours as it was really tiring, like I’d done a full day’s work.

“At the end of the first year I still had a lot of procedures to have, things like hand therapy.”

Andy and wife Wendy often travel to the KSS centre in Rochester to help with writing out thank you cards and Andy had pledged to raise money for the charity, which relies on public donations.

However, he still wasn’t fit enough by the end of the second year so, despite sill facing more procedures, Andy has now vowed to take on his 32 mile walk – some three years on from his accident.

He has had to have treatment for abscesses which stem from the back injuries and, after having injections due to a loss of strength in his legs because of spinal chord damage, is due to have nerve ablation -a procedure that destroys nerves in an area of pain to reduce or stop pain signals.

But, the determined dad to  Abby, 28, and Jake, 25, says he can walk and he is ready to complete his fundraising challenge.

He said: “I made a promise to myself that I would get fit and walk the coastal trail. I did say thank you to everyone at KSS and the NHS but KSS is self-funding and if it wasn’t for them I probably wouldn’t be here now or I would be stuck in a wheelchair permanently.

“I wanted to raise £3000 [the approximate cost of flying one person from QEQM to King’s College], the idea was to raise enough money to get one person to King’s and that would make me happy. Now I have raised more than £6k [from the walk and other fundraiser events this year], enough for two people, which make me think ‘bloody hell!’ I just want to raise as much as I can.”

Fundraising walk

The fundraising walk starts on Friday [November 1] leaving from the Minnis Bay crabbing pool at 9.15am and travelling to Viking Bay and the bandstand. Between 20-30 people will be accompanying Andy on the fundraising route.

Day two will go from the bandstand, through Monkton and Minster and then to The Bell at St Nicholas-at-Wade.

Day three – starting at .30am so people can ‘have a lay in!’- will travel from The Bell, heading to Reculver and back along to coast to Minnis Bay.

Staff from KSS are likely to be at the finish line, with an estimated arrival time for Andy at between 12.45pm and 1.30pm.

The end of the walk will be followed by a celebration at the Birchington United Services Club.

To find Andy’s fundraising page click here

KSS needs £18.8M annually to sustain its world-leading service, with 88% of funding coming from the people of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex.