Nothing could have been more crushing to a man convinced that life wasn’t worth living with only one leg.
Andy Gardiner had driven 18 miles to jump off the Tyne Bridge in Newcastle, aiming to plunge 200ft to his death.
But when he got there he found the railing was too high for an amputee to climb over.
“I felt completely and utterly helpless – worthless. I couldn’t even take my own life,” he says now.
That ultimate low point prompted a breakdown in front of his wife Kerry, and with her care and help Andy came back to his senses and decided to live.
Nearly a decade later he has triumphed over his disability to become a world-class golfer and a target-shooting marksman who has represented Great Britain.
And now he is achieving a new ultimate high by climbing Mount Everest.
He is just one night away from reaching base camp at 17,000ft, a feat for anyone, let alone a man whose right leg had to be amputated at the knee.
“It’s absolutely beautiful,” says Andy, 37, speaking by satellite phone from the last rest point before a final 10-hour push.
Sounding breathless in the thin air, he says: “I’ve never been so tired but at the same time I’ve never done anything that gives such instant gratification or a sense of achievement.”
“The Himalayas puts you in your place and brings you to your knees and I feel amazing.”
And it’s not just this latest achievement that puts Andy on top of the world.
He had barely picked up a golf club until four years ago but is now a professional – believed to be one of only two disabled ones in the world.
All of his achievements are despite – or in some ways because of – a freak accident 10 years ago.
He was outside his greengrocer’s shop in Ashington, Northumberland, when he caught his foot awkwardly on the kerb and felt his right leg snap.
Then he banged into a passer-by, who fell heavily on Andy’s leg and damaged it even more.
He suffered 13 fractures, destroyed his calf muscle and dislocated his knee and hip.
Doctors tried to piece his leg back together with pins, plates and screws but warned he would probably never walk again.
Eleven months later, with his leg muscles wasting away, they operated to amputate just below the right knee.
“I became massively depressed,” recalls Andy. “I just did not know who I was. I used to have this massive opinion of myself as a businessman, the north-east’s answer to Donald Trump.
“Then I couldn’t even look after myself. I thought my family would be better off without me.”
Convinced that he could not support his wife and son and the best option was to end his own life, he ended up in Newcastle for that terrible moment on the Tyne Bridge.
Afterwards he went home and broke down in front of Kerry.
“She was brilliant,” he says, “She knew what I had been going through and said we needed to find something I could focus on. We went on the internet and looked up disabled sport.
“I used to hunt rabbits so we looked up shooting and up came the Disabled Target Shooting of Great Britain website.”
Andy emailed the secretary and got a reply within minutes inviting him to a training weekend at Stoke Mandeville, home of the British Paralympic Association.
From that moment his whole world changed.
Training alongside Paralympic shooters Nathan Milgate and Matt Skelhon, a 2008 gold medallist in Beijing, he threw everything into his pistol shooting.
Most importantly, he learned that being disabled need not be a barrier to success and he won a place in the Great Britain training squad for the London 2012 Paralympic Games.
“I’ll never forget the day I was handed my GB kit. That was the biggest turning point since the accident. It was a massive jump-start for me,” he says. “I was lucky enough to compete all over Europe and represent GB in the world championships in Croatia.”
For years Andy was unable to use a prosthestic leg but in February 2011 further surgery allowed him to try walking for the first time.
He recalls: “It felt very strange to be 6ft again. The day came when I could let go of the bars. I took a step and then another step. It was like a two-year-old but I was walking on my own power for the first time in years.
"A friend of mine came round to see the leg and remarked how cool it was. He said he was going down the golf driving range and invited me to come along so the ‘boys could see my leg’.
“I got to the range and he gave me a dozen balls. My first shot went up in the air and straight down the middle. I just fell in love with golf there and then. I never competed in shooting again.”
Within 18 months Andy’s handicap was down to just four – an extraordinary achievement – and he was winning prizes all over Europe in disabled tournaments.
“I was playing alongside people with all sorts of disabilities – arms and legs missing, blind, in wheelchairs. But they just ignored their disability and that was a great lesson.”
Andy suffers from a syndrome called chronic regional pain, which means he still feels searing agony in the leg he lost.
He gets round the golf course thanks to a buggy and the efforts of the pain-management team who get his medication right.
In October 2012 he decided to turn professional, starting out on the Jamega Tour for up-and-coming pros.
“The main reason I turned pro was to promote disabled golf to an audience that would not normally see it,” he says.
“The reception I got from fellow disabled players was amazing. On my website people were saying, ‘Thank you’. I could not understand why at first but it was because I was a person with a disability playing on a level field with able-bodied golfers.
"Now I want to get more recognition for disabled golf, to build its image and to be able train the next generation of disabled golfers.”
Apart from his pain and his mobility problems, Andy’s biggest disadvantage as a golfer is that the prosthetic leg forces him to slide his hips at ball impact rather than power off his right-hand side.
It means his average drive of around 240 yards is around 30 yards less than fellow professionals.
He is currently without a sponsor and that stopped him taking part in this year’s world disabled golf championship in Japan.
Neither could he defend his back-to-back Order of Merit triumphs in 2012 and 2013 on the European Disabled Golf Association tour.
But next year he hopes to find a backer to support him in tournaments around Europe and America.
Andy, who now lives with Kerry and son Joshua, 18, in Fritwell, Oxfordshire, says:
“I turned pro to try and promote the game. I do not want to make money from it but I cannot take food off the family table to go to golf events.”
Earlier this year, Andy was cajoled into trekking to the Mount Everest base camp to raise funds for the Children’s Christmas Wish List, a charity that helps kids with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses.
Supported on the trek by outdoor leisure firm Blacks, who provided his kit, he is due to arrive between 6am and 8am.
The tough climb has pushed Andy to his limits with 6.30am starts, trekking up to eight miles a day and cold that can dip as low as -20C with windchill “that cuts to the bone”.
On day two, the worst so far, he and his team traverse such perilous terrain that he collapsed and had to be put to bed at the end. “But I was back on it the next day,” he says. “So it’s all good.”
Andy knows he will return from the trip a different man.
“Back then, on the Tyne Bridge, I definitely would have jumped if I could. That was the lowest point of my life. But now, I’m here, in Nepal, and there’s not a chance in hell I’d want to do that now.”
He adds: “I don’t like the person I was before my accident I was mercenary, materialistic and had no compassion for others.
“Ironically, I feel a much better person now. I’ve been given this opportunity to make a difference – and I am determined to take it.”