As Mark Pollock entered his third year at Trinity College Dublin he had it all. Captain of the rowing club and about to sit his finals in economics and business studies, he already had a job lined up with a City investment bank in September. Life couldn't get any better.
Then one month before his finals, Pollock's world was turned upside down. "I was out training and noticed some blurring round the edge of my vision," he explains. "I was born short-sighted and had detached retinas as a child but had managed OK and even had a full driving licence, so I didn't think it was too serious."
Unfortunately for Belfast-born Pollock, it was. Two weeks later he found himself having an operation from which he never regained his sight. "Losing your sight is one thing," says Pollock, "but what I also lost at that time was my identity. Suddenly everything I stood for didn't mean anything any more."
Pollock had another operation in Manchester, which also failed. "I went from Manchester to Henley Regatta to 'watch' the rowing," he says, "and everyone was racing, going travelling or off to start their new careers, except me. It was a disaster."
In some ways, says Pollock, the "disaster" occurred at a natural break. "I had two options; to go back and resit my finals, or take an aggretat [a reduced degree without having to sit his finals] and get on with something else. I took the degree and decided to get a job."
Moving back to Dublin, where he knew the streets, Pollock got involved with a company called Blind In Business: "They spoke the language of investment banking and provided the blind role models I needed, and proved to me that I didn't have to sit in my bedroom weaving baskets."
After working for a food business, Pollock got a job with a management consultancy. "It had everything I wanted: the suit, the travel, the cash, but unfortunately it went bust," he explains. So after starting a part-time business studies master's, he concentrated on what he loved most - rowing.
"Something I planned to do when I could see was to row for Northern Ireland. So by 2002 I was on the team and winning silver and bronze medals in the Commonwealth rowing regatta. I finished my master's in September 2002 and was invited by Shell to speak at a lecture about being blind.
"I heard Charles Handy on the radio around the same time, talking about packaging up the skills you have. I thought to myself, 'I have just been paid to talk about my blindness.'"
Pollock now makes a living as an international speaker, adventure athlete and author. "I have spoken in Sydney, Auckland and Miami, raced across the Gobi desert and done a marathon at the North Pole. I have the opportunity to go to all sorts of places and hopefully from time to time I can inspire people," he says.
Pollock says that his blindness "forced me to reflect on the skills that I had and what I could and couldn't do. I sometimes wonder whether if I hadn't had that shock I would have been on a treadmill forever."
Like many teenagers, Leanne Grose from Cornwall grew up wanting to be a TV presenter or journalist. But, after studying media at St Austell College - now Cornwall College - she became a local government training officer.
"I fell over while putting some bedding in the airing cupboard," she explains, "and sprained my ankle." Being very sporty and used to injury - Grose played netball for Cornwall - she thought little of it until the results of her scan came back.
"They found a tumour the size of a tennis ball in my foot," she says. The tumour was removed but, after five weeks of chemotherapy and 12 months of pain, Grose had her leg amputated. "To be honest," says Grose, "by that stage I would rather have been Leanne with one leg than Leanne in agony anyway."
While she was recovering, Grose put on weight. "I went to Woolworths and bought the top-selling exercise DVD," she explains. "I got it home and the first exercise was a star-jump." But this obstacle did not stop Leanne. "I went to the bank, got the biggest loan I could and made my own exercise DVD."
Grose now gets thousands of letters a day from all over the world through her website justastep.co.uk. As a result of her success, Grose then got a publishing deal for her life story, which she wrote herself. She says, "My dreams are coming true; I have had loads of TV coverage and am in talks with the States. I fully aim to be the one-legged Holly Willoughby," she laughs.
"I am a totally different person for all the right reasons," she reasons. "I am stronger, more focused, more stubborn and I am finally doing what I wanted to do all along."
Amonn Al-Mahrouq's musical CV is seriously impressive. He attended the London Junior Music School, the National Youth Wind Orchestra and won a scholarship to Dartington International summer school. He also studied at the Bordeaux Conservatoire Of Music before obtaining a BMus in saxophone performance at the Royal College of Music and a PGCE from Portsmouth University.
Since graduating from Portsmouth in 2003, Al-Mahrouq had been forging a career as a professional saxophonist and teacher. One day in April 2007 Al-Mahrouq was playing badminton in Southsea with a friend: "The next thing I knew it was five days later and I was in the critical care unit of Queen Alexander hospital, Portsmouth, having suffered a cardiac arrest."
His badminton partner, Steve, had resuscitated him until the ambulance crew arrived. The following month he had an ICD (implantable cardioverter defibrillator) put in his right shoulder and he is now dependent on the beta-blocker bisoprolol and the ICD for the rest of his life.
Because of the position of the ICD Al-Mahrouq can no longer play his specialist instrument, the alto saxophone, as the weight affects the scar tissue. Reduced stamina also makes playing much harder so Al-Mahrouq is now studying for an MSc in internet management and technology at Portsmouth University and runs his own internet publishing company.
"I really enjoy the freedom and social side of interacting with people in my new career," he says, "and now realise how being a musician can be very insular." He adds: "I feel the quality of my life has improved as I have more energy and free time to spend with family and friends too. Before I had the arrest, everything seemed important but now I look on life differently and take each day as it comes."
