I was messing around on Facebook, looking in places I’ve never looked before. I found a message from 2009 that I’d never read.
It was from a man who worked at ICU in St Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne. It was to make contact and how my Mum and Dad had given him their email address which he’d unfortunately lost. I immediately replied to him 15 years later of course!
My Mum and Dad knew the man who wrote to me, fond memories of him. I however did not.
It made me realise something that’s occurred to me again and again since then. There’s a large part of my life I don’t remember. An important part as well, the gap between before and after my TBI. It was important for the people who know me too, particularly Paul, my Mum and Dad who were by my bed witnessing it.
There are little bits I do remember.
Waking in my hospital bed early in the morning on my own, calm
Mum helping me walk around the ward once
Paul, Mum and Dad taking me out in a wheelchair to a café next door
Mum and I being taken in an ambulance to go to the rehab place Talbot
Doing the jigsaw my Mum and Dad brought to help my coordination
That literally sums up three months of my life.
The last picture I made from that time, significant parts that I arranged and had framed. I can’t remember any of it whatsoever. But I’ve made it so that when I feel low and frustrated with things now, I can look back and see where I used to be and how my brain used to work. So that I can appreciate how far I’ve come.
