A new normal

Whilst labelled as a mild injury, the impacts are far from mild for many, resulting in long-term health consequences such as persistent headaches, poor memory, sleep disturbances and fatigue, putting a strain on social relationships and performance at work. Many of these men faced lasting effects– months or even years of adapting to a new normal.

blurred symptoms

I’ve deliberately blurred this and it symbolizes the vestibular symptoms I get when I'm overloaded. If I turn my head, then it takes a while for the vision to resolve. It might only be half a second, but it sort of feels like I'm underwater. It’s also dark through the door so the journey onwards is unclear.

nausea as if always on a boat

Even to this day, there’s sometimes that I still get nausea. I hate it. My balance has always been really good I guess until the concussion. The balance was very much off, and I had that for quite a while. It almost felt like my inner ear completely changed. I mean even to this day I think my balance is still not quite right.

daddy needs to sleep today

When we're out in public and something's going wrong, I can talk to her now and say, dad has to step outside or we just had to go home now otherwise daddy's brains not going to be very good for driving and stuff and she understands that it is a real thing, and she can see that it really affects me. She'll crawl into bed beside dad, any chance she gets. We have a very close relationship.

everything just changed

I still struggle with the noise and the lights and at the beginning I couldn't handle being in the supermarket. Before I got hit, I could walk through the supermarket and be fine. But now it's just a different feeling being in there with people, it gets too crowded and it’s definitely different now. Overwhelming is the word.

overstimulation

So that's the sun and it signifies that everything now to me is quite bright or light. Bright things to others are overpowering bright to me. So that's all a mess and kind of hard to explain. Having a munchkin now I have to do things, and it does wear me out faster and I’m knackered at nighttime. I’ve noticed a lot of the time I'll go to sleep at the same time as her at night, because I've just got nothing more to give

things are no longer the same

Before I had the accident I’d have a shower, no problem at all, just a normal shower, like everybody else. But since then, it's not how it used to be. As you can see, I've got two taps to turn off and sometimes I kind of look at the taps and it’s like I’m standing there…the brain just shuts down.

leaving the full-time job

That's our Airbnb business that we set up because of my head injury. I lasted seven years in a job that I shouldn't have been doing because I was struggling. I don't think it was the type of work, it’s not being able to escape when you need to. The whole point of this, and it seems to be working so far, is I can go and clean a cabin for an hour and if I need to sleep I can just walk back down to the house and sleep.

untitled

A way of keeping track of the days.

chronic boredom and unhealthy coping

In the afternoons, I've got no energy, it's just really difficult. I get to three o'clock and I’ve just got nothing to do. I'll start playing a video game and somewhere along the line, beer joined into the party there as well. When I first started doing it, it was a good way of unwinding and forgetting about the world, but it became an unhealthy habit. I've tried to cut back to some success and I’m working on not drinking. lt just doesn't feel good for me.

it's me or the bike

I don't have a license to ride bikes anymore, my wife has sworn that I’m not to ride a bike anymore. She would probably leave me if I was on the bike. It's either me or the bike. She definitely got more of a fright than I did.

a concussion makes your world or bubble pop

You're so just wrapped in your bubble until something big happens like concussion. Then just everything changes. The mind being as amazing as it is, I’ve never found that going back fully to what it was prior. It's been hard that's for sure. Even to this day I'm finding still, literally just... words, you just can't, you can't kind of...it's been difficult, that's without a doubt.

lonely, depressed and struggling

I can’t accept this as my new norm. There's no life involved here. This is waking up in the morning, doing a sudoku puzzle, going to the gym, having lunch, sitting down, playing video games, watching TV, going to bed. All by myself. And that’s depressing.

I think it’s such a great juxtaposition of all this [previous] adventure and excitement, and then me, sitting down and eating dinner by myself.

concussion testing: the era of the unknown

What I really wanted to know was: why was I so tired? Why are my ears blocked? All I did was fall over and hit my head. It can't be that bad so find whatever this is and fix me. I wanted a plan. And if I'm honest I just thought it would be some medicine and a bit of therapy, and I'd be fine in a couple of weeks. That sounds quite silly when I think about it today, but at that time I still felt pretty good, I just couldn't understand why I couldn't function properly like I used to.

opting for sim versus the real thing

I wanted to go back go-karting, and I ended up going back but we've got three girls. My wife was very much like, if something was to happen to you again then we're screwed. I don't want you to be like that. So, it’s just kind of now going down the path of me still loving to do things but in a reality of a world where you can kind of get hurt. I definitely miss it.

that saved my life

That saved my life basically. You can't see it, but it's broken in ten places. I didn't actually look at it for two months. One of the big tests for me was two weeks ago I bought a new one, which I had resisted. That was my signal that I wanted to go to the cycle shop. I do want to get back on the bike, but my wife’s a bit worried about it.

Trying to see the beauty in things, but mind is a blur

You can get so tunnel-visioned when stuff is going on. You can only concentrate on usually one thing. Everything else just has to be out of focus, otherwise it's just way too overwhelming. I guess it's kind of just having one thing of focus and everything else having to be a blur just to kind of maintain sanity, but also making sure your brain can actually work.

memories fragmented

My memory prior to the concussion was phenomenal, especially long-term memory. Whereas now there's certain things I can kind of remember, and especially if there's something like a smell, then that brings back some of the stuff. But otherwise, it's significantly worse. I would say, its half, a quarter of what it was prior to that.

I'm kind of limited to where I can go, and this is a nice place. When I'm really down and I don't always realise at the time, sometimes it’s like, ah, wait a minute you're going through a bad patch. This is kind of like my rescue. Even though it's a real struggle to get there sometimes, once I've done it, it's like, ah, yeah.

a need for the outdoors

ongoing tests and learning

I had various tests done because the ringing in my ears was not getting any better. It’d been 6 or 8 weeks since the accident. At the end of the test she said to me, you have superior canal dehiscence in your ear. I didn't actually know what that meant at that stage. That's why I had to have the surgery. I have to say it's one of my learnings. Having never been sick in my life, never broken a bone, never spent a night in hospital until now. This was the first accident. You’ve gotta put yourself first and do what you need to do.