On August 12, 2022, Simon had a life changing accident while working on a mine site.  “A tyre that I was inspecting exploded and parts of the metal wheel hit my head, and the tyre landed on top of me.”  Simon was rushed to Kalgoorlie Hospital and later flown to the Royal Perth Hospital by the Royal Flying Doctor Service. 

“The next day they repaired the laceration and put plates in my head for the fractured skull. And that’s sort of where my brain injury journey started. I had to learn to sort of stand and walk again. I did that pretty quickly because I had determination that I wasn’t going to lie in bed all the time.” 

Navigating life after injury 

Over the past two and a half years, Simon has been dedicated to his recovery.  “I’ve had lots of appointments. Lots of OT work, lots of physio, lots of neuropsych and neuro appointments, now I’m permanently disabled. I can’t return to work. So, I’m just negotiating and travelling that at the minute, sort of getting that around my head and moving forward”.  

“You got kind of gotta get on with it. You can’t sort of dwell in it. You’ve got to move forward in my opinion of it. You can’t just sort of sit there and woe is me. You’ve got to push yourself.”

Simon also faced changes in his life, from losing his license and also losing contact with many of his friends during his recovery. “It was medically suspended, and there was nothing they could do. Car journeys were overstimulating, giving me headaches. I focused on doing everything I could to get back behind the wheel.”

“Your friend group changes almost automatically. A few core friends stay, but many drop off. That was really hard. At first, people say they’ll visit, but they don’t. You either sit at home and be sad, or you go out and find new friends. For me, joining Kings Park Warriors, a support group, was amazing. It’s been great to talk to others in the same situation without being judged.”   

Managing fatigue and moving forward   

Simon was unprepared for the long-term implications of his injury but has now developed strategies to manage his daily life. 

“I’m not sure how it was for other people, but at the start of my recovery, no one really said the words, brain injury or disability. I was kind of running off the assumption that as soon as my ribs and lungs were repaired and I got the OK with the fractured skull, I could sort of go back to work. Then being told you can’t, that’s that was hard.” 

 “My management starts last thing at night because I make sure I get a really good night’s sleep. The better sleep I have at night, the more I can achieve in the mornings before the fatigue sets in.” 

 “…throughout the day I’ve learned to pace myself. Instead of trying to just like blast through things, I’d pace myself and what I found really helps is instead of letting my mind jump from one task to another I find it better to complete tasks 100%.” 

 “I make sure I rest every day, even if I feel like I don’t need to, I’ll go and have lie down and just go through like my mindful exercises so I’ll either sleep or I will put on white noise to block everything out. I’ll just do breathing exercises that I’ve been given from OT’s and those really work because yeah, even if you don’t sleep, you’re emptying your mind.” 

“I make sure that if I’ve got something big on, I’ve planned a couple days ahead, so I’ve had a lot of rest and I won’t do anything for those days to make sure that I’m sort of capable in the moment. Especially for appointments because you travel there, you got to concentrate while you’re in the appointment so that you’re understanding as much of the information that they’re telling. That would be my advice to people if you’ve got a large appointment coming up, take two days off before it and don’t do anything.” 

Simon’s advice 

“I would say that it’s going to be hard for people when they use the words like brain injury but It’s a choice. You can either choose to do nothing or you can choose to push as hard as you can and get back to as close as you were before, you’ll never get there, but you keep pushing yourself hard and it makes you feel better.”