I, Matt Gantry, was born in the north-west of England on the 2nd of August, 1985. My two earliest years were spent living in the Wirral, before my parents and I moved to rural Leicestershire. This is where I grew up and live to this day.
Commencing a plumbing apprenticeship after leaving school at eighteen, I worked for a company called Quadron on their local council maintenance contract, as well as many prestigious contracts all over England. Four years later, I took and passed my Class II Heavy Goods Vehicle licence and realised a childhood of being a truck driver. Unfortunately this wasn’t to last. Just three weeks into my new lorry driving career I was involved in a life-threatening and life changing road traffic collision.
After a three and a half hour rescue, which one fire fighter with twenty years’ service under his belt has said, was the most technically challenging extrication of his career and having had my heart restarted twice by ambulance personnel while trapped in the wreckage of the twenty six tonne truck, I was airlifted by Warwickshire and Northamptonshire Air Ambulance to the Walsgrave Hospital in Coventry. This is where I was rushed into a life saving five and a half hour brain operation.
Discharged from hospital after having broken my left foot, left ankle, left kneecap, severed a tendon for the vastus lateralis muscle at the side of my left leg and having fractured my skull at the top of my nose, there was also the brain operation I endured. If that wasn’t enough I no longer had a sense of smell, I lost 2/3 of the sight in my right eye and still suffer with nerve damage to the right hand side of my upper body (little things like carrying a cup of tea with his right hand are impossible).
After a one hundred and one day stay with the NHS, I spent sixteen months regularly visiting hospital for outpatients physiotherapy appointments. I progressed from wheelchair to Zimmer Frame, to crutches and then a walking stick. Finally I was able to walk unaided, albeit very gingerly.
It was during this time I read Seven Troop by Andy McNab, the book is a nonfiction account of his time in the Special Air Service. Some of the lads in his troop suffered, or do still suffer with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and there were striking similarities with how at times, I felt. I self-diagnosed myself with PTSD. Severe bouts of anger and rage, an unequal reaction to an action, extreme depression and suicidal thoughts, to name but a few. My GP (Physician) didn’t agree however and told me I needed to find something to do, I went out and raised over £5,000 for the Warwickshire and Northamptonshire Air Ambulance that had previously saved my life. Returning to the doctors feeling exactly the same, once again I was told I wasn’t correct. My GP sent me to anger management counselling. I wanted to throw the counsellor out of a window, the man was an idiot and didn’t have a clue! After another year of being in a very dark place and asking for help but not getting anywhere, I finally arranged a meeting with the top head lady at Leicester General Hospital. She explained I didn’t have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but the symptoms of a head injury and PTSD overlapped. Knowing this I could more easily deal with the feelings I was getting and it all made sense. Feeling alone and not knowing why I was getting like this, was the scariest thing I have ever been through. Ultimately, I was right with my first diagnosis, I was just calling it the wrong thing. Am I angry at the my GP and the NHS for missing this? No, because in 2008/2009, head injuries and mental health wasn’t such a big thing. I’m just thankful I had the strength of character to quell the weekly suicidal thoughts.
During this process of recovery I was getting back into work and found out that many of the jobs I did previously, were no longer an option. Plumbing was a no go because I just wasn’t as mobile as before, neither was landscape gardening. If I could have, I would have jumped straight into a truck again, but due to a sight loss in my right eye, I had my Class II HGV Licence revoked. I attempted many more jobs including being a self-employed European Courier, which I loved, but in a post 2008 recession world, the haulage industry was clambering for work and an already cutthroat industry, fell through the floor and it was incredibly hard to earn a living wage. So that’s why I turned to writing.
So why The Gamer? Well as a young teenager I read Bravo Two Zero by Andy McNab and The One That Got Away by Chris Ryan, both about the equally disastrous Special Air Service Patrol deep inside Iraq in the first Gulf War (August 1990 – February 1991). From there on in I was hooked and read anything to do with the special forces. While I was on the bus, in a shopping centre, or sometimes in a hotel on holiday, I would imagine terrorists had struck and then play through all the scenarios in my mind of how I would fight back. It then took over twenty years for me to link it to a video gamer doing the same! Thus, The Gamer was created!
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