William Hall was an 18-year-old soldier on his first operational deployment serving in Afghanistan when an illness turned his whole life upside down.
The mysterious norovirus five year ago left him with swelling joints and after being sent back to a military hospital int he UK he was given the diagnosis of a reactive arthritis.
Now 24 and living in Airdrie with his partner who has also been his care Rebecca Rodger, and a career in the Forces in ruins, he thought he would be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
"I had reactive arthritis and it just dictated my life," said the former 71 Engineer Regiment soldier. "There is no warning of when it will flare up and I could not believe the extent of the delibilitating effects.
"The swelling was all over my body and I had to use a wheelchair. I was one of the fittest soldiers around in the Army and was left like that.
"I would say that the effects on your mental health are just as if not more significant than the physical side. I don't consider myself a weak person. At 18, I was in Afghanistan and I was a driven and determined person. I was at the mercy of this. I lost my will to fight. "
He needed a job after leaving the Army and started work as a security guard.
"I maintained it for as long as I could but that's when things crashed for me. I got dismissed due to attendance management when my legs just stopped working. I couldn't provide them a date for a return."
But new medication, intense hydrotherapy and physical therapy have given him a new lease of life. He is out of the wheelchair, relies on crutches and is back at work as a social support worker for the elderly.
"What a lot of people don't realise is that being in the wheelchair, you become non-functional, and the first thing is that your muscles waste away and then your tendons start to shorten and stiffen up," he said.
"When that swelling is not there when you could regain the power in your legs, you don't have the movement or the mobility because the tendons have tightened up.
"When I was in the wheelchair, I didn't have a crystal ball that after all this work i was going to be out of the wheelchair. As far as I knew i would be there for the rest of my life. I didn't know if my legs would start working again. But I am in a far more functional state than I was now.
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