Lee Chambers was excited for the birth of his second child when, a week after his 29th birthday, his wrist randomly began to swell up. Within days the symptoms had spread to his legs, and he was confined to a hospital bed and unable to walk. Now, after using his daughter's pram to help him learn how to walk again, he's running an award-winning wellbeing business.
"I knew the only option was to pick myself up, dust myself off and try again," said Lee, a 36-year-old psychologist whose life coaching venture, Essentialise Workplace Wellbeing, provided free support to frontline staff working for the NHS during the pandemic.
The business - which has been named Greater Manchester Small Business of the Year, and secured Manchester Talent Awards Entrepreneur of the Year and Great British Entrepreneur Award for Service Industries for its founder - was inspired by his personal journey.
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Back in 2014 Lee went from being 'fit, healthy and normal' to being unable to wash and eat without help, with a diagnosis of autoimmune arthritis. Within just five days, everything he had worked hard to achieve - his first home, a video game business he'd been working on for five years, and the security of his young family, looked like it was in serious jeopardy.
But Lee was determined not to let adversity stand in his way. Born and raised in Breightmet, Bolton, he excelled academically as the first person in his family to go into higher education.
"I started life on a council estate and I think as I started to grow up, I was a bit of a surprise to everyone. I was quite disruptive as a young child and would always be pushing boundaries and asking the questions, but after that my parents started to realise I was academically gifted," Lee told the Manchester Evening News.
"I was very lucky that, despite our circumstances, my parents really pushed me to excel in school which gave me an outlet and something to focus on. I remember times when my dad would be working 12 hour shifts and my mum would work three part time jobs just to keep a roof over our heads to give us that chance.
"I always hoped that when I was grown up, I wouldn't have to work that hard just to be able to survive - and that was the crux of my upbringing."
When Lee won a place studying International Business Psychology at the University of Manchester, a bright future seemed assured. But, feeling under pressure to succeed, juggling full time classes with an NHS job to pay for his accommodation, and battling personal identity conflicts after a childhood in which he felt isolated as the only black child around, Lee began to struggle with his mental health.
One night, security were forced to break into his dorm after he had locked himself in his room during what he described as a 'complete breakdown'.
"I didn't know where I was going or who I was becoming and had completely lost my sense of identity. As a young black boy at the time, there weren't many role models in the field I wanted to go into and I began to miss shifts at work and lectures and it begun to spiral. I wanted to hide away from the world."
After a year at home finding his feet, Lee gave university another shot before graduating and getting a local government job, which enabled him to begin saving and fund into his new video game business. It was an initial success and gave him stability as he started a family.
That threatened to come to an abrupt end in 2014, when his immune system started to fail and his 'body started attacking itself'.
"I couldn't play with my son (Myles) or be the man I wanted to be and help support my partner who was six months pregnant with our second baby (Annabel)," he said.
"I needed to help my family as much as I could it was taken away. I was in a lot of pain my body was attacking itself. It made me so angry and frustrated. I was a young man who couldn't move or do anything for myself. I’d lost my independence, which was really challenging mentally, as I prided myself on being active and able to help others, and suddenly I was in a hopeless situation and needed to ask for help. It went against my identity.
"I had to learn to walk again when I came out of hospital. I was put into walking rehab and intensive physiotherapy and it was such a difficult period. I had to adapt a lot of things that I did in everyday life but I was determined to get back on my feet and support my family. After my daughter was born, I started to use her pram as a walking aid."
For just under a year, Lee, who now lives in Preston, was either stuck at home or in hospital, spending hours in rehab, working towards being able to walk again.
It was that life-altering experience that gave Lee the realisation that his video game business was doing nothing to 'help the world.' Drawing from his ordeal and mental health struggles, Lee threw his efforts into a new wellbeing business, which he launched in 2019, and steered through the challenges of the pandemic.
Now, in 2022, the dad-of-two can finally walk unaided again, but still lives with daily pain and stiffness in his knees and remains limited in the exercise he can do. But he's spurred on by how far he's come - and by the recognition that Essentialise has achieved.
"Winning these awards was just amazing. It doesn't matter what you win - it's about the difference that you make," he said. But, it made me realise someone, somewhere, appreciated what we do when the world is facing lots more uncertainty and awful challenges.
"There is an important message to take from this. I feel that for everything I have been through, even when it's been really rough, I've found there have been things to learn and I have turned it into a positive scenario."
