Meet the Community Health Champions – Caroline Waugh

Every day, Caroline Waugh shows some Sheffield steel.

Slowly cycling an old tricycle up a gruelling hill on the school run along with her two kids requires single-minded determination. But the 43-year-old divorcee and single mum, who suffers from brain damage received in a car accident in 1988, wouldn’t have it any other way.

After taking up cycling with the city’s Cycle for Health group, she has gone a step further by becoming a community health champion at the Sheffield project – and she is loving every minute of it.

“Although it can be hard work on the hills, I enjoy it very much. It makes me feel good in all kinds of ways and has increased my confidence no end.”

Her route to becoming a cycling health champion has been one of dedication and hard work. “Cycling has opened heavy doors, which had previously been prevented from opening, due to the constraints of being a single, disabled mum,” says Caroline.

“I know it sounds dramatic, but I could so easily have ended up on a downhill spiral. I’ve dropped a clothes size and I’m feeling happy, useful, and fit.”

Her connection to Altogether Better came via the head injury rehabilitation centre which she has been visiting for the last three years. Other than her enthusiasm, her background in counselling is helping in her role as a community health champion. She has worked and said ‘I thought if she can do it, so can I’ and stayed.”

Other people she has helped include a blind cyclist. Together they ride around on twinned lower recumbent bikes, with both controlling the pedals and Caroline steering.

For a woman who could ‘merely prop myself up on a walking frame and shuffle’ when she left hospital for the first time, Caroline Waugh has come a long way. You get the feeling that she also has altogether further to go.

Read Caroline’s blog on http://iaintnotomato.blogspot.com/

(This article originally appeared in Alltogether Better News, November 2009)

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