Paralympian David Smith has checked himself out of a world-famous NHS hospital and is paying £2,000-a-week for treatment that he hopes will enable him to represent Great Britain again.
The Aviemore-born athlete said the programme he was on at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire was not working for him.
He said: “Their goals for me were to get in a bath and brush my teeth and mine was to ride in the Alps. There was quite a gap.”
So he is now a patient at the privately-run Neurokinex in Watford, which is the UK’s leading provider of neurological activity-based rehabilitation.
However, he said his life savings would probably run out in September – the same time he has targeted for a gruelling cycling race in the Alps.
Mr Smith stressed that the care at Stoke Mandeville had been “second to none”, but said the programme was not suitable for an athlete.
The 38-year-old was left temporarily paralysed from the neck down after doctors removed a tennis ball-sized lump from his spine in 2010.
He went on to win a rowing gold medal at London 2012 after spending a month learning to walk again, but the tumour returned.
Surgeons removed it for the third time in March, but the nine-hour operation left him struggling to move the left side of his body, ending his plans to compete as a cyclist at the Olympics in Rio.
While recovering in Stoke Mandeville, he learned of Neurokinex from another patient.
He said: “I am planning a full recovery then getting back to competing next year for Great Britain and I am aiming for the next Olympics in Tokyo in 2020.”
