I was married at the time. My wife and I love each other and we’ve come out of it as good as we possibly could. We haven’t had any children - partly because of myself, and because of the way we thought about things. I’m still wishing that I could do more. I would love to still be doing computer programming but that just got too hard to keep up with. I then had interviews with NDIS and employment services and they helped direct me to study at TAFE where I did a certificate in community services. I then worked at Connect Ability for 3 or 4 years supporting and caring for people.
Moving from computers to helping people was a really good thing!
A jump start While his accident was in 1992, Phil says that he has “a new lease on life” since beginning with Headstart a year ago.
“I
was on Minmi road driving home to Maryland from a friend’s place. It was an 80km hour zone at the time and wasn’t surrounded by a million houses. I came around a corner and there was two horses in the middle of the road and I hit them both, resulting in a big accident. Thankfully I was driving a Saab which is a very safe car. While recovering in hospital it was clear that my brain injury was causing problems with my left side hearing and vision. The damage to the front part of my brain has caused the biggest problem which is really bad short term memory.
So my accident wasn’t too much of a physical thing. I spent a couple of months at Hunter Brain Injury Service on Darby Street. They were essential in helping me become a person again part of my recovery and dealing with those early problems and helping me ‘get better’. At the time I was working as a computer programmer for BHP. They kept my job going and finally - once I was out of hospital again - I started back there two days a week. But I wasn’t as quick is off the mark as I used to be. Unfortunately, these days for programmers, time is of the essence and I couldn’t achieve the results quickly enough.
In the end with further analysis of my brain and my eyes, they found further vision impairment but realised that it wasn’t my eyes but my brain. From then I couldn’t drive a car anymore because I’m legally blind. This meant I couldn’t continue doing support work for people, because properly because I could no longer transport anyone around. So I had to retire from that job about a year ago now, and I haven’t had a job since. I’ve always collected model cars, although that’s been affected by my disability too. I used to get the model car classic kits and spend weeks putting this wonderful car together. It was great fun when I was young. But unfortunately, because of my vision issues, that became physically impossible for me to do. What I do now – and it’s important to me even though I’m not building them – is I collect cars. I’ve got a filing cabinet with a few dozen classic metal cars that I’ve collected. For a long while after that I was almost like a hermit, staying at home and not doing much. I would still love to still work in some capacity again some day.
At that stage the NDIS helped give me the opportunity to be supported by Headstart, and now I can go out and do things and be connected with people.
It helped me to be more human. And that’s magic, that’s really important.
It means that I actually now have a purpose in life. On a particular day I have to be somewhere at a certain time, and I’m meeting up with those people. It’s great!
Phil rarely misses the Rec get togethers.
The sad thing is that you’re different. You’re not the same person anymore. It’s hard because what you were really good and what you really loved, and still love, you can’t do as well as you used to be able to.
NewsLink Dec 2021 I Page 20