Kristen Paskins’ life was changed almost overnight by a rare neurological condition that left her in a wheelchair. Discovering padel has been key to rebuilding her confidence, independence and wellbeing.
Kristen grew up in London in a cricket-playing family and became a nurse and clinical research associate. She is a trained classical singer and first met her now-husband aged 16 when they both sang in a choir.
In 2022, for no apparent reason, she started to experience crippling anxiety. Then within a month she had completely lost her voice. A speech and language therapist diagnosed her with muscle tension dysphonia, which means the muscles around the larynx are rendered rigid by excess stress.
Things soon got worse with muscle tremors all over her body, seizures and chronic fatigue. A few months on, over the space of a single week, her mobility declined radically. She couldn’t do more than five minutes of movement without collapsing from exhaustion.
At the end of that week, she found herself, somewhat in a state of disbelief, travelling in the car with her husband and mum heading out to buy a wheelchair. “It was one of the toughest days of my life,” she recalls. “And I still had no clue about what had caused my new disability.
“I’d always been super active during my childhood. But here I was aged 26, living in what felt like an elderly person’s body. In fact, I was less active than my grandparents.”
And still, despite endless rounds of consultations and tests, she had no diagnosis. “When you have an illness that impacts you so suddenly and you don’t know what the cause is, that is one of the scariest things you can go through,” says Kristen
“It gets to the point where you don’t even care what the diagnosis is, you just want something you can look up and try to understand. You want an answer when people ask, ‘Why are you in a wheelchair?'”
Incredibly, throughout this nightmare, Kristen kept working. Her colleagues would fetch her from the car each morning and support her in the office. She avoided meetings due to feeling claustrophobic, but defiantly continued her career. “I never stopped working because everything was changing and I needed some sort of consistency,” she explains.
Three months after abruptly becoming a wheelchair user and all the major and minor life adjustments that entailed, she decided to dye her hair pink. People started to comment on her hair, rather than her wheelchair, which boosted her confidence to go out in public. “It was one of the best things I ever did,” she laughs.
Having finally received a diagnosis of functional neurological disorder and taken some time to adjust emotionally and physically to the limitations of her new lifestyle, Kristen was encouraged to try wheelchair basketball after meeting GB player Louis Telford (pictured below) on a train journey.
There, she discovered a welcoming and empathetic community and that priceless feeling of being part of a team. “I know had I not joined that wheelchair basketball team last year I would still be sat on the sofa, having no independence, not even being able to go to the supermarket by myself,” Kristen admits.
Soon afterwards, around a year ago, Kristen and Louis started playing padel at Padel Maidenhead. In doing so, Kristen became the de facto GB no.1 female wheelchair padel player.
Kristen’s trademark pink hair is now a regular and welcome sight at Padel Maidenhead and on the basketball court several times a week. Not only have Maidenhead’s seven courts become another treasured ‘safe space’ for her, she has also started competing internationally and has become a Padel Ambassador for the LTA. She is currently undertaking a specially-adapted padel coaching qualification.
Kristen has travelled to Venice, Milan, Dubai and Miami to compete on the Inclusive Padel Tour (IPT) alongside fellow Brits Louis, Jack Binstead, Malik Berbiche and Andrew Simister. Next weekend, she’s off to Logano in Switzerland. The tour pairs a ‘bionic’ (disabled) player with an able-bodied player, with the disabled person allowed two bounces. Kristen has been instrumental in bringing the IPT to the UK for the first time when it visits Padel Maidenhead in September.
At the recent Pro Am Padel Tour event at Rocket Padel Beckton in east London, Kristen and Louis delivered an adaptive padel exhibition for children and young adults with disabilities from Newham Ability Camp.
At the event, she said: “Any one of those young people could have been me, in fact it was me! If I can inspire them to participate and want to come back with their family or friends, that is all I could ever wish for.”
Kristen adds: “My neurological condition impacted me very quickly, I lost a lot of things I used to do and had to rebuild my identity — but padel was one of the biggest ways I’ve been able to rebuild my strength, confidence and independence.
“It’s allowed me to become part of a community that really understands each other and can share their stories to inspire each other. I was so isolated and my outlook was very negative, but sport has done such wonders for my confidence.
“My vision for the future of padel is that more people in my position can experience the same impact it’s made on me. It creates a community where people can feel part of something and enjoy it from the very beginning. If I could play a leading role in that, it would be the greatest privilege of my life.”
Great article and hopefully it will give others in a similar situation the confidence to play Padrl.
Comments are closed.