Speaker 1:

Well, it's helped me help me recover physically. Obviously, after I got out of the hospital, I was a lot skinnier. I'd lost a fair bit of weight. I'd lost my bicep completely at that point. I had a bad shoulder from where I landed, and LSA paid for exercise physiology, which has helped me build my strength back again and recover all my injuries. Things only get better.

Speaker 1:

I now started writing a book as well that I got lent from LSA. I got loss and grieving after brain injury. And I that I think will teach me a lot as well. I want to keep myself busy. I mean, I'm very busy at the moment because we had another baby at the end of last year. So having two kids, two little ones is enough to keep you busy, but I'd like to get back to work as well, but I need to do it slowly and properly. I'm not rushing into it again. Just take it easy.

Speaker 1:

I just went. I was like, yeah, I want to do this much. And I just went hard at it. I thought I was fine. I sort of was in denial that anything could really happen like it really affected me that much. And I just went back to work way too quickly and went way too hard and ran myself into the ground. And I realized what everyone is talking about when they say you can't take on too much. And not even just with a brain injury. I was told for years before the accident by people that I worked with that you take on too much work. You're just going to run yourself into the ground. I never had any idea what they were talking about. That it's just too much. It's just too much. Because I was working just ridiculous hours and all the old fellows would just keep telling me, "It's a bit too much, mate. You need to take it easy."

Speaker 1:

I never understood. And then last year, once I ran myself into the ground completely, I got really bad depression. And that taught me that mentally you can only handle so much before your body's going to break down. I feel like the accident was a part of me running myself into the ground because before the accident I was doing 12 hours a day, six days a week, sometimes 15 hour days or more before the accident, I was always one. I never cried, never showed emotion, never spoke about things that I felt bad. If anything that made me feel slightly bad, I would never ever talk about. Now it doesn't affect me at all. It doesn't bother me. I'll just tell everyone how I'm feeling. It's right. That's it.

Speaker 1:

I hate to think of where I'd be without all the therapy and all the help I've had. I was getting more and more depressed last year after the accident. Just about things that I wasn't able to do as well as the fact that I was overdoing work and life. So without the scheme, without the help that I was able to get pretty sad last year. And luckily I did have a lot of help to try and get me back out of it. And if it wasn't for Con telling me to get back from my job, step back from my job before I did something bad, I think I may have done something bad.

Speaker 1:

So I thank the scheme very much for helping me with what it has and helped me to stay alive hugely. I'm very thankful for Sharon. And I think I've lent on her a lot through a lot of my depression I've called her for help. I haven't known who else to call and who else to ask for help. She's always been there to help me out and answered my calls from random days and random times, but she's helped me out every time, which has been great. So I'm very thankful for Sharon.

Speaker 1:

I've finally come to terms. I'm out of denial that I had an accident and that has affected me. So it's only now that I feel like I'm really going to be able to, other than the psych like Con being able to help me through the depression, I think now I'll be able to use the occupational therapists a lot to my help and really rebuild my life slowly and properly and recover properly because I didn't do it the first time. But now I'm willing to listen. I think I should be able to do it a lot better.