LOCKED inside his own paralysed body and only able to communicate using his eyes, it looked as though normal life was over for dad-of-two Dave Bracher.

Mr Bracher, from Didcot, was a fit and healthy 44-year-old before he was suddenly rushed to hospital. He ended up in a coma for 12 days and suffered so-called locked-in syndrome.

He said: “In the space of 12 hours it went from a little bit of tingling in the toes to being in a coma. When I was brought out of the coma I was locked in and couldn’t do anything.”

The former Zurich insurance employee was suffering a rare combination of Guillain Barre Syndrome and Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis (ADEM) which attacked his nervous system.

His eyes were his only means of communicating with the outside world for a month.

He said: “My sister is a speech therapist and she would bring in laminated cards and I would blink at them. I was spelling words blinking my eyes.

“It was so frustrating being able to feel an itch on the end of my nose, but not being able to move and scratch it.”

Gradually he began to regain control over his upper body.

After the 12-day coma, 42 days in intensive care and a month on the neurology ward he was moved from the John Radcliffe Hospital to the Oxford Centre for Enablement and from there to the Stoke Mandeville spinal unit where he was treated for more than seven months.

“I was away for nine or 10 months before I came home properly,” he said.

Now four years on, he has become an inspirational pioneer of wheelchair racing and takes part in the London Marathon on Sunday.

Mr Bracher, who remains paralysed from the waist down, said: “I deal with things positively – we have an amazing capacity to adapt and change.

“You just have to get on with it – the alternative is that you stop living and shut yourself away. You’ve got two choices.

“I’ve got two young children and a wife and that’s where my focus is.”

Mr Bracher’s wife Paula had to cope with bringing up the couple’s two children Tom and Alice, who were just 18 months and five years old at the time, while he battled the viruses.

Since 2010 he has been in talks with the organisers of the London marathon to allow wheelchair users to take part, without being registered as elite athletes who use specialist three-wheel racing chairs.

Last year Mr Bracher, along with one other normal wheelchair user, became the first to take part in the London marathon. He is now doing the marathon for the second year with four others.

Now a trustee for the Spinal Injuries Association, Mr Bracher is using his latest marathon bid to raise funds for the charity.

To sponsor him log on to justgiving.com/user/ 16330247 See Friday’s Oxford Mail for our London marathon round-up