Wow! What a couple of years (part 3)

Whilst in the pool I became aware that  the water was taking most of body weight and I realised that I could start hopping and wouldn't be having a negative affect on my body. So I started hopping in the pool and continued doing this as part of my rehab back home.

We came back home, it was in early November and I was starting the next phase of the journey of my rehabilitation. I joined a Pilates class, went to a swimming pool to hop around, continued with my writing and computer sessions, as well as reading a book aloud.


During this time I was not working, spending a lot of time at home and decided to build a retaining wall as part of my rehabilitation. This took about 4 weeks to undertake, it wasn't an activity to undertake quickly and carrying and moving the sleepers around the garden were excellent therapy for me.

So at the end of November I caught up the the CFA Brigade Captain, Pete, and caught up for a chat and a coffee. We discussed what my aim was and what be ahead of me if I was to choose this path. I turned up at the station on the Sunday and felt like this was a huge mistake but I needed to persevere and meet what was a huge challenge, both mentally and physically.


Over the next couple of months I was slowly ticking off the mini milestones I'd set out whilst in my first weeks from hospital. One of the milestones was to go for a bike ride. Oh my, that was an experience. I unsteadily set off on the ride and chose to take a bike path, at the end of bike paths there's sometimes posts in the middle to prevent cars accessing them. Well I was unsteady, not being able to control my right leg perfectly and became focused on this post that I was slowly approaching. When learning to ride a motor bike they instruct you to look at in the direction that you want to travel and not at the obstacle and you'll always keep going: Don't do this and you'll hit the obstacle. Well the saying is true as I hit the post, not hard and uninjured and an undamaged bike, but I ended my journey, cycled home and didn't attempt to ride a bike for another 14 months. It worked out well and I can now ride again.

It was my birthday and we went up to Bright to follow through with a gift voucher that I'd received as a present over a year ago, I was going to try paragliding. I felt that I needed to prove to myself that I could still undertake activities and pursued in undertake paragliding, The experience was fantastic and I am really happy to have undertaken this. We'd advised the instructor of my situation and he said if i could stand and jog slowly then we'd be fine.



 It was still January 2011, we flew to New Zealand and I didn't bang my head in the cabin: Yay! progress.


Over the previous two months I was looking for a job, wanting to get back into working. When I initially spoke recruitment consultants I was open about my situation and quickly realised that every consultant was dropping me: I was a little concerned that I wouldn't get a job. Then a friend gave me a call saying they wanted me to undertake a role that helped a program manager set up his program office.


I started the role at the end of February and didn't realise what I was letting myself in for. The role itself was really simple but my own confidence and inhibitions were more challenging than I would have ever thought.

Meanwhile outside of work I'd just started a 9 month course undertaking the basic fire fighting knowledge, so Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings were now to be taken up by this course.


I was given a desk that was in the corner, which suited me as I did not want to interact with people. When I walked along the corridors i was under the impression that I wasn't walking straight and  people would notice. I didn't want to speak on the phone as I was self conscious of my speech. My typing was reasonably slow and in-accurate and my hand writing was something that I was not comfortable with. How was I going to get over this?

Whilst being back in the city and working I became aware that I wasn't improving as quickly as I had been. I therefore engaged with a fitness trainer and worked with him for the next few months. We focused on having my body undertake movements correctly and we improved not only my fitness but how the body actually worked.

I nearly raised more than money.

In March 2011 we were partaking in the Worlds Greatest Shave, we did this at the local shopping precinct and were raising money for leukemia. IT was just after 0930hrs and we had just set up and sprayed our heads, all of a sudden I was accosted by a drunk verbally, I couldn't defend myself either verbally or physically and felt quite scared. I was shocked that there were some other members of the team trying to raise money and no one stepped up or showed any signs of stepping in; I do stilk wonder if they would have done before anything happened. Thank fully as I didn't respond verbally the person walked away and no further confrontation occurred.

Back at work my confidence was improving over time, the things that concerned me were slowly improving and my confidence on the phone was improving. After 4 weeks I held my first conference call, I was nervous before hand however the call went fine and I had overcome one big concern: tick!.

The next few months passed by without any miracles happening but I was still improving and noticing my speech subtly changing. The aphasia was becoming less obvious.

At the end of July we had another week away, this time Broome, WA was the destination. We had a great time, more relaxing than anything else. Winter sun, camels on the beach and a trip out flying over the Bungle Bungles in Western Australia. 

As the next few months passed by I was improving bit by bit and eventually I'd decided that I'd out grown this role and it had enabled me to grow.  It so happened that I took a phone call from a colleague whom I'd worked with previously, he'd been fully aware of my situation and even visited me in hospital.


This phone call led to a Project Management role and leading a team of developers and testers, as well as a coffee.


In the new role had to pick up my confidence and make out to the team that I was the project manager and they could have confidence in my leadership. Not only was I back in a project manager role I was also being asked to deliver this work in a new methodology, which was completely new to me as well as the team and we had a full time coach working along side us. This coach was called John and little did I know that we'd become really good friends.


I spent 7 months with this team from August 2011 to February 2012, this is the closest that I got to a team and was saddened when we departed.