The Brain Injury Community has been established to provide a link for people with a brain injury, their loved ones, their support network and professionals wishing to learn how to improve their understanding and awareness of brain injury. We will help them to navigate their path to a better understanding of brain injury. And provide the support so desperately needed.
Let’s team together and help make a difference. Your support is greatly appreciated. Thank you
By establishing The Brain Injury Community, we can do it! Peer support is invaluable! One of our major goals is to connect survivors, both physically and online by allowing other survivors and sufferers of this invisible disability to share their unique experiences and stories to the wider community.
Why am I so passionate about this?
In January 2012, I was emptying the family camper trailer, when the lid slammed on my head, crushing my skull and face, ultimately trapping me. Ambulance and critical care paramedics arrived and I was rushed to hospital, only to be released the next morning without any proper pain medication, neurological referrals or follow up appointments. I suffered from multiple difficulties over the next 12 months and ultimately was forced to return to the Emergency Department to demand further assessment of my injuries. Within 3 weeks I was an outpatient at the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Unit at the PA Hospital. Finally I was being validated, heard and receiving the medical attention I required to be able to partially function again. Whilst receiving care as an outpatient I realised I had sadly slipped through the cracks 12 months earlier and I learned I wasn’t alone, this happens to many many individuals far too often.
It’s been a long, hard journey. It’s been quite lonely and sometimes soul destroying. But hey! I’m still here!
In 2015, I started an online support group for those living with a brain injury. We are now a family!
I want to do more of this. I wanted to do so much more! So I did!
In the last 3 years I have been doing A LOT of public and guest speaking, facilitating educational workshops, running seminars, etc to get my story out into the wider community. I have worked with James Cook University and their Health Science Department personnel. The graduates and students took onboard the content of my lived experiences with a brain injury and all I can say it was absolutely amazing.
Assisting 2 of my friends from the support network, who were inpatients at BIRU together, reconnect after more than a decade is one of my more personal and greater achievements.
