S4E17 – Life in Bloom: Sam and Cam Bloom on Life, Adversity, Growth and Love - a podcast by Ben Pronk, DSC & Tim Curtis

from 2022-09-15T08:30

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Our chat today is with world champion para-surfer Sam Bloom, and her husband Cam. Born on the Northern Beaches of Sydney, Sam had everything she had always dreamed of. She’d travelled extensively, fulfilled her childhood dream of becoming a nurse and was a happily married mother of three young boys.

But without warning, the dream turned into a nightmare when on a 2013 family holiday in Thailand, Sam fell through a rotten balcony railing and crashed six metres onto the concrete below.

Lucky to be alive, she’d suffered devastating injuries, including severe damage to her spinal cord that left her paralysed from the chest down. Broken and hopeless, Sam reached her outer limits of physical and mental suffering. But with courage, determination and a little help from an unlikely feathered friend, she made her way back from the edge, scarred but undefeated. 'How' is the subject of this podcast episode.

6:00 Sam and Cam’s background, and how they met…

11:30 Talking the importance of travel in the like of the Blooms

16:00 That fateful trip to Thailand

18:30 Moving hospital to hospital… to hospital

19:40 Sam’s recollection of the incident

21:20 ‘Memories are so subjective’

25:00 When Sam realises the severity of the incident…

26:20 Cam is mopping up and trying to hold it together while Sam spends months in hospital

30:00 Sam arrives home… and its not how you think she would be

32:00 Enter penguin .. a fluffy magpie chick. Life changes

36:00 Cam and his accompanying photography. What he couldn’t photograph

38:20 How about the impact on the boys?