BEAUTICIAN Jane Young is training hard for the London Marathon to help her brother after he suffered catastrophic injuries in a bike crash.

Five years ago former borough council worker Stephen Rouse went over the handlebars of his cycle on a ride around the West Wiltshire Downs and hit a fence.

Jane Young told the Adver: “He knew he was paralysed straight away because he heard his neck break and he couldn’t move.

“He was in seven different hospitals after his accident because paralysed people isn’t a common thing and hospitals rarely know how to look after them.”

After he broke his neck in 2015 he was taken to Southmead Hospital in Bristol. Spells in the Great Western and Salisbury District hospitals followed in 2016. He was also treated by spinal injuries experts at Stoke Mandeville.

Stephen, a town planner who worked at the council for 25 years, suffered setbacks and complications, including two bouts of pneumonia.

Jane said: “It was very hard it was one of the worst spinal breaks you can have, it was a C5 so everything below the neck is paralysed.”

While the family were dealing with results of Stephen's crash their dad Cyril died from bowel cancer.

“He was in Swindon hospital, a lot of the time my mum was going backwards and forwards going to see my dad and my brother. It was really difficult for us, it caused a lot of money issues,” she said.

Over the last few years she has put on a gala to raise money for Aspire - a spinal injury charity.

Jane told the Adver: “This will be the third one now and he can’t go back to work so we raise the money for him and others with spinal injuries."

In the first year they managed to raise £12,000.

“It’s difficult for him to go along, he didn’t make the first one but he did come to the second one. He has to have special equipment to get into bed and to get around so it’s very hard.

She explained: “He’s a different person now, he was a very positive person and now he’s very low a lot of the time, he has to fight for everything.”

Stephen used to be a very active person and that’s one of the reasons Jane decided to do the marathon for him on April 26.

She will be lining up at the start on April 26 alongside her colleagues Danielle Brundish and Emma Rose from her business Blissfully Young - a beauty salon in Milton Keynes.

To support her go to justgiving.com/crowdfunding/steve-rouse.