A new image has been released showing the loving care that the wife of Rob Burrows shows to her husband every day. The former rugby league star is suffering from Motor Neurone Disease and a new documentary on ITV shows the daily care his loving wife Lindsey gives him - carrying him in her arms to his bed.
Brave Rob hit the headlines recently when his former team-mate Kevin Sinfield carried him across the line of the Leeds Marathon last month. He had pushed him around the 26 mile course and the final few steps when he took him in his arms touched the nation.
Mum of three Lindsey has been married to Rob for 17 years and has called for Kevin to be given a knighthood for his fundraising efforts. Every day she looks after her husband, the documentary shows, as he battles his MND condition which was diagnosed four years ago. He was given just two years to live, but thanks to the care he has received and his own will is still alive, the Mirror reports.
His condition is severe - he has now lost all ability to talk, and retains no voluntary movement control, except with his eyes, which he uses to spell messages on a screen. He also can’t swallow properly with food having to be liquidised and sometimes needs a ventilator to help him breathe.
The former super-fit rugby player aged 40 is now just seven stone and Lindsey can be seen in the show carrying her husband like a child. She said Rob now slept downstairs and she carries him around the house - refusing extra equipment and carer assistance through sheer love for her husband.
She said: “While I’m physically able, I will continue to do that for Rob, and I know he’d do the same for me,” she says, speaking matter-of-factly. We haven’t really discussed the option of carers. We don’t want stairlifts, hoists and things, for me it can become quite clinical.
“You just want to do what you can, while you can, for as long as you can. He’s my husband, I want to care for him. You say those vows, in sickness and in health, that’s what you want to do. He’ll often say, ‘Thank you for looking after me, I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you doing these things’. I know how grateful he is.
“It’s not easy being a carer, but when I look at what Rob has had taken from him I’ve nothing to moan about.” “Rob will always be a hero in our eyes,” says Lindsey, who met the “shy teenager” aged 15. While working one day a week as a NHS physiotherapist – Rob’s parents take on his care that day – she spends the rest of her hours as full-time carer and mum to Macy, 11, Maya, seven, and Jackson, three, at their home in Castleford, West Yorks and has done the Leeds Marathon herself. “Rob said he couldn’t be more proud.”
Tonight - Lindsey and Rob: Living with MND, on Thursday 8:30pm on ITV1 and ITVX
*Asked today about calls for Rob Burrow and Kevin Sinfield to be knighted, Health Secretary Steve Barclay said: “I can’t stray into making those sort of recommendations, but can I just say as the Health Secretary but also a rugby fan, I think what both of them have done is absolutely amazing.
“I think they’re both remarkable characters,” he said of the former rugby league team-mates who have been fundraising and campaigning for motor neurone disease (MND) research after Burrow’s diagnosis in 2019. “And if I can just lean in as much as possible in that context to say, you know, just think they’re inspirational figures and I think what they have done for the MND community is absolutely remarkable.
“I think their campaign is absolutely inspirational and perhaps if I can leave it there rather than straying too much into territory, which ministers shouldn’t.”
