i gues my rehab truely began with a Rehab place in Bristol my parents lived in Bristol in a flat- and they had come all the way over from Australia to rent a flat just so they could be close to their errant son and heir
I remember distinctly coming home from Bristol and being delivered in the wheel chair van to my front door and all, of the daffodils were out to greet me a far cry from the all-conquering hero that I had envisaged would be returning after my triathlon
Starting to walk again- and by god I bet I was insufferable when I finally came home because I could sort of walk but not really Safely such that my Scarers were under strict instructions from god knows who but I have my suspicions that I was not to be allowed to walk unobserved at all ; which just lead to me coming up with a whole heap, of spurious excuses for asking the scarcer to go over, to the barn so that I could get up and go to the other end of the kitchen which was quite a large kitchen space and bear in mind it was also not that long before that, when I was just walking in the play room which was just in front of the three man sofa because that way if I fell I would have a soft landing and when I say walking it was really just limping and despite that I still sent the Scarers off on my spurious errands so that I could walk some more; it were also to, build up my confidence that I could truly walk unaided because it was also around this time hat I was walking with a handling belt which was designed so that a scarer could support me if needed easily whilst I was walking ; and then there was the other period of 6 months’ time if I went anye I had to go wearing an American style gridiron sports helmet and this was for anywhere even just the gp’s surgery, so there I was sitting in the gp’s waiting room looking like a disabled child with a special helmet on and it was about this time I would just go to sleep wishing that I could just get a little better because I felt so beholdant to them because they had all worked so hard just for me to get better and get my life back on track because I felt I had owed it to them because although physio is all about getting your body to try to work again against the new constraints that the bugger presents you with it is absolutely essential that you carry on with the exercises because clearly 2 hours a day is woefully insufficient and it is here that one needs to marshal your Scarers in to different groups because they each have different abilities which you can use to aide your recovery and depending on who it was I would ask one or other of them to come to physio so that they knew exactly the exercises I needed to practice to do , so that I could carry on with the exercises
Ground-breaking technique with ultra-cooling In hindsight I was lucky to have been enrolled in the treatment arm of the therapeutic hypothermia study whereby if you have patients with traumatic brain injury and during the very early phases of their recovery if you cool their body down n to just 35 degrees it is hoped that the brain will recover more completely because in essence it will be less active and an in essence it is in layman’s terms is hibernating and so requires less oxygen and nutrients (now I know one’s brain it is not exactly doing a crossword when one is in a medically induced coma- if you think about when you sleep your brain is still very active and there are a whole lot of basic housekeeping tasks your brain is required to do such as to keep you breathing and to keep your heart beating and if we can switch off these brain activities then all the nutrients and activity going on in the brain can be directed to helping it to recover from the injury
- First waking up from my coma Move from intensive care to regular ward. By god my brain was so addled I kept thinking g I was in other parts of the country some mornings I was waking up in a hospitals secretary’s office or I was in an old flat in London or I was in a future house in Cornwall ,or I had been walking along the beach with Olivia , or just strolling down bond street on a Sunday afternoon, shopping with Olivia, and now I am left with this sense of an extreme sadness for what has Happened because liv can just see me as a patient in a bed still , and I guess you cannot blame her because by god she has been through the mill I mean she had a vegetable for a husband and was told to expect me to never be the same again and that was if I did actually
Survive but what can I say we were just two very small people who were confronted with train wreck and I know I have supposedly have done quite well but it has been so slow and I still find I am having extreme difficulty dong things that were almost second nature to me such as playing tennis and I just know I am going to see my kids racing off in front of me both metaphorically and literally tracing away from me with their ability to play sport, and I know it is relatively minor on the whole scale of life and death, I just wanted to be able to teach my kids something about playing tennis or running and not be stuck on the side-lines just watching; and I do find it amazing that how long it has taken me to even be able to give the appearance of functioning normally ; because meanwhile I have had to watch my kids all grow up and race away with all ,of their normal lives
