Harvey, the son of a well-known Brisbane swimming coach, knew he was too tall to fly a jet fighter due to regulations – “I was 6 feet 4 with all my height in my legs so I wouldn’t have fit,” he says – so set his sights on helicopters.

But the week before his 16th birthday, a rugby accident changed his life forever.

And in a tale of remarkable dedication and unfaltering friendship, it also altered the paths of his closest mates, whose bond from their school days at St Joseph’s College, Gregory Terrace continues more than 20 years later.

After Harvey was paralysed from a C4 spinal injury incurred during a pre-season club game in Indooroopilly on April 6, 2003, his Year 11 friends rallied, with one in particular deciding during Harvey’s nine-month hospitalisation to change his own life course.

Tim O’Shea cast aside his ambition of being a mining engineer and chose to research spinal cord injury, dedicating his now impressive career to finding breakthrough treatments.

O’Shea, an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Boston University and with a laboratory ​in his name, has garnered more than $2.4m in funding in the past three years to advance his work on glial cells in the central nervous system and their role in recovery.

“I wouldn’t be doing what I am if it wasn’t for Ben,” O’Shea says.

The pair, both 36, speak fortnightly via Zoom, with Harvey formally assisting the US-based research by describing what it is like to live with spinal cord injury.

Last September, the two mates happily spent even more time together, with O’Shea the best man at Harvey’s wedding in Brisbane.

Others in the bridal party included Ben Beer, an orthopaedic spine surgeon on the Gold Coast, Brisbane urologist Matt Roberts (who chose that speciality because when Harvey left hospital he had bladder issues), Ben Winkle​, who’s training to be a general surgeon​, and teacher Sam Brown, who is back at their old stomping ground as a house dean at Terrace.

“It’s fair to say they were all impacted by my accident and Tim’s not the only one I’ve inspired,” Harvey says.

​THE ACCIDENT

That fateful April day, just over two decades ago, remains a blur for Ben Harvey.

“It’s weird because I know a few other guys who’ve had spinal injuries playing rugby and they know exactly what happened, but with me, I kind of just ran the ball up, ended up on the bottom of the ruck, and I guess I fell at a funny angle,” he says.

“With 16 other blokes on top of me, my neck had a lot of weight on it … everyone got up and then when I tried I couldn’t, and I was like, ‘oh’, and I called out to one of my team​ mates.

“For a very unfortunate incident, I was very fortunate because the referee was an emergency physician so he knew straight away not to move me, and call an ambulance, and yeah, that was that.”

Harvey, a loyal Wests Bulldogs’ second rower, was playing on that day for Taylor Bridge (the club is now known as the UQ Junior Bullsharks) “because they were short a few boys”.

The popular teen – who also excelled at rowing and swimming – spent the next nine months in the spinal unit of the Princess Alexandra Hospital as his anxious father Doug, mother Cheryl and older sisters Kelli and Cara rallied around him.

Doctors gave Harvey a grim prognosis.

“When I first came out of surgery they said to me – and I’m 15, on my own and being ventilated – you’re a quadriplegic and may never walk again.

“That was a lot.”

Harvey, whose spirits were buoyed by almost daily visits from his school mates, said he might have taken the news harder if not for fellow Terrace student Nick Hanly (son of former long-serving Nudgee College principal Daryl Hanly).

“Nick had a similar injury in 2001 and was recovering pretty well, so I thought, I’ll be right, so let’s crack on and do this rehab.”

Harvey also drew strength from his maternal grandfather, the late Kevin Morse, with whom he shared an April 16 birthday.

“It’s a spooky story but when Poppa was 15, the same as I was, he got kicked in the heart playing soccer and had a stroke, so was paralysed down one side his whole life,” Harvey says.

“Poppa just got on with living. Shit happens, you deal with it and you move on.”

​

THE BEST FRIEND

“That was the whole of 2003 essentially for us,” remembers Tim O’Shea, who also had a rugby injury a few weeks later, breaking his collarbone and dislocating his shoulder.

“In hindsight, not being able to go to rugby training every Tuesday and Thursday night was a blessing because Mum (Cindy O’Shea) would drive me up to the hospital and I’d hang out with Ben.

“That really galvanised our friendship.”

O’Shea, who was also by his mate’s side during occupational therapy session​s, began researching spinal cord injuries.

“Ben was getting constantly better – there was a recovery trajectory taking place over the first couple of months – when I’d come in there was always something new to talk about and we could see an improvement. So extrapolating that improvement to like, ‘oh well, how long is it going to be until he can do this or that?’ was encouraging, but then he’d plateau.”

Fascinated by what he’d read about prosthetics and exoskeletons in assisting spinal injury patients, O’Shea switched gear.

“If it wasn’t for Ben I’d probably have gone into mining engineering, given the supply and demand at that time,” he says.

“But during my undergrad program at QUT (where he graduated biomedical engineering with first class honours in 2008), I was made aware of a regenerative medicine approach in the US.”

O’Shea moved to ​t​he States in 2009 and completed a doctorate of philosophy in medical engineering and medical physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2015.

“The guy I ended up working for at MIT (billionaire chemical engineer Robert Langer, who co-founded Moderna, later known for its Covid vaccine) had just done this study where they had made rats walk again and I was like, ​‘that’s really exciting, they’ve kind of figured it out​, they just need some more engineers to help get it over the line’.”

But it wasn’t as simple as that.

O’Shea realised he needed to better understand the biology of the human spine in order to be able to potentially repair it.

For the past 15 years, he has dedicated himself to that understanding, and through his latest grant – from the Paralysed Veterans of America Research Foundation – is advancing his research into glial cells.

“​Your brain and spinal cord have two main kinds of cells​,” he explains, “the neurons that process the information that allows you to feel and to move and then all these other glial cells that support those functions​.

“Glial cells are critically important in injury response so we’re trying to manipulate those cells to guide regeneration in the context of spinal injury.

“We have two strategies – we use injectable materials to guide the functions of existing glial cells, and we also make ​glial cells in a dish and transplant them into an injury environment, priming them to do wound repair.”

O’Shea is assisted by two Ph​D students in the O’Shea Lab, at a university whose bio-engineering program is considered to be in the top 10 in the ​U​S.

“Boston University has the venture capital funding, the research infrastructure and the surrounding hospital framework to make it happen,” he says.

“We’re not on a clear home run yet, but I keep telling Ben to do his rehab so he’s in the best possible shape when we are.”

​

THE WIFE

Melissa Hall met Ben Harvey on the dating app Hinge in January 2021.

She was drawn to his profile which read: “I BYO chair, it has wheels. Rugby ruined my stand-up comedy career so I’m looking for another one.”

Hall, 32, says it showed that Harvey had a good sense of humour and “could take the challenges of life”.

In the two weeks before meeting in person, Hall, a procurement consultant who was travelling extensively, and Harvey spoke ​daily.

On their first date, at Salt Meats Cheese in Newstead, the proverbial ice already had been broken.

Harvey recalls his relief when “she walked in and looked like her profile pictures so she wasn’t cat-fishing me, and I thought, ‘here we go​’”.

Hall was more cautious.

“I really liked him, he was attractive and funny and we got along really well, but if you’ve not dated a person with a disability before, there are questions you have around what does the rest of your life look like,” says Hall, who grew up in Keperra, the eldest of three children, and attended St Margaret’s Anglican Girls’ School in Ascot.

“A lot of questions you feel you can’t ask because you don’t want someone to feel you’re judging them but I just needed to know.”

Trying to start a family was a deal breaker.

“Early on, I asked Ben if he wanted children some day and he was like, ‘hmm, don’t know’, and I said, ‘well that is something I see for myself so if you don’t want that, this isn’t the right relationship’,” she says.

“And it actually took him a long time to say, ‘look, I didn’t think I would ever meet someone who would accept me, so I had to tell myself I don’t want children​’.

“That was a really sad moment,” Hall says.

“He’d cut himself off from so many things, because he just goes, ‘no one’s ever going to love me so I won’t get excited for the family I won’t have’.”

The couple, who live in an apartment in Corinda, have since had fertility assessments and Hall says she “could be the problem, if anything” because she has only one ovary.

“We are going to start trying and if nothing happens, we’ll move to IVF,” she says.

Hall and Harvey married on September 9 in front of 125 of their nearest and dearest on the Queensland Terrace at the State Library, then celebrated at Gusto da Gianni in Hamilton.

Hall describes her husband as “everything you could possibly want in a partner”.

“He is kind, calm, incredibly loyal and very clever. It probably makes it sound like I think very highly of myself, but I don’t think I could suffer a fool for a partner,” she says.

Over their three years together, Hall has watched Harvey’s confidence grow.

“I’ve seen him seek more opportunities, attend things he wouldn’t have previously, and advocate for others who are less able-bodied than he is,” she says.

Among those opportunities are establishing a non-profit peer support organisation called Roll Models, speaking at Ballymore last August at the Bledisloe Cup fundraising lunch by the charity Hearts in Rugby Union, and writing an article on the less obvious physical challenges of spinal cord injury for the national Forward Ability Support organisation in June.

Through the latter experience​, he also landed an ambassadorial role for spinal injury awareness.

Harvey says he owes a lot to Hall, who is “probably the most considerate person I’ve ever met”.

“How do I describe Mel? If I start, I don’t know if I’ll stop. She’s very generous and will do anything for anyone she loves,” he says.

“She has a wicked sense of humour, we laugh about things that probably other people wouldn’t, she’s just the best.”

​THE FUTURE

The couple is looking forward to their honeymoon, delayed until later this year to allow enough time to plan it.

Harvey says the greatest challenge – both on holidays and in daily life – is accessibility.

Whether restaurants, bars, cruise ships or hotels, many places claim to be wheelchair friendly but are not.

“You can have toilet doors that are too narrow for your wheelchair, while some restaurants still have no disabled bathrooms close by, it’s crazy,” he says.

With his wife by his side and his best friend leading research across the Pacific, Harvey plans to ramp up his advocacy work.

He is the official spinal cord injury advocate with Boston University’s O’Shea Lab, sharing insights into his lived experience with researchers, while also gaining valuable knowledge himself.

“Tim’s got me taking notes every fortnight when we catch up via Zoom,” Harvey smiles.

“Yes, I’m training him up,” O’Shea says, “so he has a working vocabulary in glial biology to interact with scientists and communicate ideas with researchers.”

O’She​a says he is constantly inspired by his childhood friend.

“People would be exhausted if they saw what it takes for Ben to do things others take for granted every day.”

Harvey’s injury, while initially diagnosed as complete (which would have fully paralysed him from the C4 vertebrae down) has shown to be incomplete, allowing some movement and sensations.

​“What I can and can’t do is pretty bizarre,” Harvey says.

“For the initial couple of months after the injury, I had no feeling below the nipple and elbow, which is like a complete C4, and that’s what you’re stuck with – you can shrug your shoulders but that’s about it,” he says.

Many people also need to be on permanent ventilation due to the C4’s proximity to the diaphragm.

“I’m lucky because slowly, things came back. My pinky (finger) moved first and I thought, ​‘that’s a bit weird’, and now my left hand has come back and I can type.

“I don’t have complete sensation in my legs but I can wiggle my toes and I can walk in the pool. I can walk on land in a walking frame, and I can do pilates on a reformer and smash out leg presses at full spring.

“Things could keep improving, especially if Timmy keeps doing his research.” ■

oshealab.com