his condition improves a little more, he will be shifted to rehab but I’m thinking this is some way off yet. However, given his progress to date, perhaps sooner than later. If you have any questions, please feel free to email them to me and I’ll answer individually. At this stage these updates are travelling to all parts of the globe, with his mate Daniel Sneddon in Mexico and his Uncle John in the Philippines.
Regards,
Harris family
By this stage, the news of my accident had spread as far as England. Another two mates from school were enjoying a year abroad when they got wind of the trauma in Melbourne. They had heard about the group email and they wanted in.
Tuesday, 2 December 2008
Hi Vic,
This is Scott Clark, I’m not sure if you know me. I went to school with Scotty and have always been mates with him since our skateboarding days at Research Primary School. I had been seeing a bit of Scotty Harris in the lead up to me heading overseas indefinitely in June this year and when Daniel got on to me the other week I just couldn’t believe it, I was in absolute shock. I’m stepbrother with Daniel Sneddon and he’s been forwarding me your updates as I’ve been trying to keep as much up to date as I can with the situation. I have just started to live in London for the next year with another mate, Andrew Hughes, who went to school with Scotty also. We’ve both been really concerned about Scotty, I was just wondering if you would be kind enough to add Andrew and I to the updates if that was possible?
It must be such a hard time for all of you and its good news to read that he is gradually coming along ok. I’m thinking of Scotty everyday over here and hoping he is going to pull through all right – he’s a strong kid.
I hope everything is coming along ok Vic and our wishes to the family.
Kind Regards,
Scott Clark & Andrew Hughes
If I had known about the love and support of all the people in my life, I may have just thought twice about doing one more lap on the day that changed everything. By this stage, I was big news to a select few in Mexico, the Philippines, England and Australia. I would like to say I had celebrity status, but it was all for the wrong reasons.
Moving Into Rehab
You are now a lot more impatient in that you need things done straight away.
- BRETT HARRIS
On 10 December I was moved like a piece of valuable cargo from The Royal Melbourne Hospital to Epworth Rehabilitation in Camberwell. As it turned out, this became my home for the next six months. It was common knowledge by now that I had severe brain damage. I was taken to the Acquired Brain Injury Unit, which was the most serious part of the hospital. Most people who entered those gates had been in a serious accident, often involving a vehicle on the road.
By this stage it was becoming apparent to my immediate family that I might never gain the independence that is mandatory to being a grown up. But I was determined to give it all I had. If I was ever going to gain the ability to live an independent life again, this was the place to learn how – within the walls of Epworth Rehabilitation.
Around the same time as my admission, an older gentleman settled in too. He was seventy years old and had been hit by a car while riding his pushbike. To be riding a pushbike on the road at seventy he must have been at the top of his game, but age definitely wasn’t on his side. He had suffered head trauma and it was quite sad knowing that he most likely would never snap out of his oblivious state. The older you get, the less chance your brain has of recovery; but for me, being only twenty-three meant there were high hopes. You can never recover fully from an injured brain like mine, but fortunately I was in the best environment with the best people to teach me how to live with my disabilities.
People who have been in a serious accident, or just concussed from a knock to the head, will likely be in a state of Post-Traumatic Amnesia. PTA is a system recovery that your brain goes through after a head injury and the amount of time you spend in that state will reflect on the damage that’s been done. It will also determine your chances of getting back in the game.
I don’t remember much from this time, but while I was back in The Royal Melbourne Hospital I can clearly recall the feeling when I removed a tube from my mouth. It was one of the many keeping me alive, but I was obviously sick of it. Although I wasn’t conscious, there was something tickling my throat. To scratch it, I discovered that all I had to do was pull on the thing that was coming out of my mouth. Well, that ‘thing’ was a tube and it wasn’t just in my mouth, it was all the way down my throat. I say ‘a tube’, but I don’t know which tube it was because I attempted to get them all out at one point or another. I pulled it out a bit and it kept coming, so I kept pulling. Eventually it came out. I can remember that it felt like a rat crawling its way up my insides.
Another memory was to do with my catheter tube, the tube that helped me go to the bathroom. The way a catheter works is that it gets fed into your bladder and, to stay in, it expands at the end so it can’t be removed. Well, I proved that wrong. I found it so annoying that I removed this twice. Along with Jaclyn feeding me, these were the only things my brain held on to.
The recovery mode in PTA required a very low stimulus environment with no TV, no friends and no chance of making any funny gags. My inner tribe, as I call my immediate family, were the only visitors I was allowed and they were told there was to be minimal stimulation to my brain. I do, however, remember laughing uncontrollably at things a twenty-three year-old shouldn’t laugh at. Fits of laughter are a common occurrence with a brain injury. Even today I cannot control my laughter, which can sometimes be very inappropriate and come out at the wrong times. I slip back into my immature laughing fits every now and then, but this is something that I have been mindfully trying to fix for years. One little fart and I lose it. There’s no coming back from that. Is this the injured brain in me or the young ‘boy’ in me?
I’m not sure if my family and I laughed at things that happened because they were genuinely funny or because everyone was just happy I was alive.
Dad had recently retired from work and his big plan had been to set off and enjoy his retirement. That was before his world went back twenty-three years and he found himself caring for a fully grown infant. While relearning how to live I was like a kid maturing all over again. As a father of three adult children, the last thing Dad could imagine doing was wiping his twenty-three year-old son’s arse, but this just had to be done, and, no questions asked, Dad put up his hand and took one for the team on that job.
As I said, I don’t remember much from this time but luckily I’ve always had my parents around so that they could remind me exactly what had happened. The emails Dad wrote and that I would read later definitely were a factor in helping me solve this 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle.
Thursday, 11 December 2008
Hi all,
Progress continues. Language yesterday was a couple of whispered words. Today, short sentences with humour attached. E.g. Deb andI were visiting and Scott’s sister and husband arrived for the tag team. Talking to Nicole, I asked how she was to which she politely responded with, ‘Yeah, I’m ok.’ To this Scott reaches out to his sister and uttered, ‘You’re ok, but I’m FUCKED.’ This was followed by a grin that had Nicole in hysterics. Another comment, which amused me, was that just before his dinner
