Former Arsenal academy star Daniel Cain is now a tetraplegic and needs 24-hour care in wheelchair
A former Arsenal Academy star had his drink ‘spiked’ on a night out and is now tetraplegic, confined to a wheelchair and requires 24-hour care, his family have revealed.
Daniel Cain, now 23, from Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, had been a fit and healthy young footballer who was also a qualified electrician – until a night out with friends in 2020 had a tragic ending.
On June 9 of that year his friends suddenly noticed he looked a ‘funny colour’ and was unresponsive – he had had a cardiac arrest.
They performed CPR until an ambulance arrived, at which point paramedics took over and worked on the young man for 24 minutes until they managed to get his heart beating again.
After being taken to hospital, the footballer was in a coma for 25 days as doctors told his loved ones to prepare for the worst – that he would not recover.
HIs mother Tracey Cain told the Independent: ‘When I found out I just went into automatic mum mode. I phoned his father who was at work and his sister came back from Essex.
‘At around 3-4am in the morning they tried to prepare us that he was not going to wake up but I said to keep trying.’
Doctors warned Cain’s family that even if he did wake up, he would be severely brain damaged and in a ‘vegetative’ state due to the amount of time his brain and spinal cord were deprived of oxygen.
Despite the odds, the young man did wake up from his coma, although was initially unable to do anything at all.
Ms Cain said: ‘When he woke up he couldn’t do anything, he couldn’t move – he was like a newborn. But nurses said he was following them with his eyes, so they said there was someone in there.’
Over time, Daniel began to recover his cognitive functions and limited movement – his mother said that although his short-term memory had been impacted, his long-term memory is intact.
His older sister Natalie said her brother spent two-and-a-half years in various hospitals and care homes, before finally being allowed home in December.
He is now wheelchair bound and also has limited upper-body movement, meaning he requires full time care. He is dependent on his family, needing to be hoisted in and out of bed and taken to the bathroom.
Since January the former footballer has been attending rehabilitation sessions with not-for-profit Neurokinex, his sister has said.