j) David's story (10 mins)
David
When David was 20, he had a near fatal car accident on the way to work. It left him with a serious brain injury. He was in a coma for about 3 weeks. He then had months of difficult rehabilitation in hospital. He learned how to sit up, slowly he leaned how to walk again. His speech was very bad, was very difficult to understand him. He improved. He did all kinds of therapy at the Rehab Centre and eventually he went home. He has continued rehabilitation at home for a further 3 years. He lives with his parents and siblings. David’s rehabilitation goals were to be able to return to work and to return to driving. He successfully achieved both of them.
- David
- Diane, David’s mother
- Sonia, David’s Community Support worker
We try to maintain a relationship with them in a professional way. All the carers that we have are very nice people and, you know, you enjoy their company, but they are there for a purpose. We are always friendly, I ask how they are going, what they are doing, but we try not to get too far into the personal side of things. They are there to provide a support for David, not as David’s friend or as my friend. It’s better to try to keep it on a professional level.
I think the carers are incredibly respectful of my space. When they are here working with David they have an allocated area where they do their work. If they are doing focus tasks, or occupational therapy, or speech therapy they generally try to do it somewhere where there is not a lot of interruption for them, so that they can focus on what they are doing, but also to minimise the, I guess, the intrusion to the rest of the family. So, they seem to be very respectful of that, and I’m very appreciative of that.
Diane, David’s mother
