VOICES ECHO
What year are we in?
Do you know where you are now? Is it morning, afternoon or night?
Where are you? VOICES ECHO INDISTINCTLY Raise your left hand.
Can you tell me what
day of the week it is? Raise your left hand.
VOICES ECHO INDISTINCTLY Severe brain injury.
Can you open your eyes? We're just trying to
get you better here. You're at a place called ABI,
which is Acquired Brain Injury. MAN COUGHS WHISPERS: TK. TK? I'm still sleeping. (CHUCKLES)
(GROANS) TK is 22 years old. Oh, darling. You're
all right, sweetie. Six months ago he had a car accident
that left him with a traumatic brain
injury. It's 120 days since the accident. He's just learnt
to grip a toothbrush. Cos when you wake up, I know you
like to do it after your coffee. Only now does he understand
what's happened. Open your hand, TK. My name is TK Chase, short for Te Kaha. I had a car crash in
the Karangahake Gorge. I had a head-on. I wasn't wearing my seat belt. and, um, and I hit the front, um, dashboard— I hit the front of it, and then
it flung me back in the back— in the back seat. He actually looked unscathed.
He didn't have any scratches or— He had a little cut above his eye,
and the shattering of the glass was
still over him, just the— just like dust. He was the last to
fall out of the nest. Yeah, he was just eager for change
in his life at the time of his
accident. It was something that he spoke
about a lot. Where to for him? Study; he had thought maybe
jump in his van and travel NZ. He just was excited about
the next stage of his life. So, use this hand to push it
right back up your arm first. TK is at a specialised
rehabilitation centre in Auckland. In NZ, someone sustains a
brain injury every 15 minutes. After falls, the second major cause
of brain injuries is road accidents. (SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY) Terry was driving his truck when it
was jackknifed by another vehicle. The impact was so great that he was
thrown out of the cab window and on
to the road. Um, I, um, um... wanna go to have a two-day party. A two-day party?
Yes.
Who's that with? That was four weeks ago. His
constant thrashing is caused
by post-traumatic amnesia, and his wife, Andrea, is doing
her best to reassure him. He just tries to escape all the time
and get off the bed. That's why the
bed's down low. Can you get back on your bed?
Get back up. Come on. Up you get. On the bed. Come on. Up you get. Good boy. Up you get. (SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY)
There ya go. Terry has no idea of time... Try again. Another one. ...or that he's 56,... Yep. Thank you. ...that he's a grandfather, a father or a husband. Before his accident, Terry was known
as a gregarious bloke, a clown. He was also obsessed
with motorsport. What Terry's body and brain
most need is rest. But he's only getting four minutes
of sleep at any one time. This confused state has gone on
far longer than the medical team
expected. Hopefully get the agitation thing
sorted, cos I have noticed, the more
he sleeps, the less agitated he is. So if they can just sort that, then
it would be good. (CHUCKLES SOFTLY) I think I'll speak —
speak and be off. You're gonna speak and be off?
Yeah, I'll speak —
speak and be the... We can get two clients who come in
with very similar scans, yet their presentation's
completely different, and the way it affects them in
the longer term may be completely
different, and I just think that's fascinating. Stephanie Kennerley is one of four
psychologists at ABI rehabilitation
centre. We get all these clients coming in
with these injuries in different
areas, and we have to try and
think as a team about, 'OK, well, what do we think's going
to be working OK for that client? 'What do we think they may struggle
with or may have difficulties with
now, based on their injury? Our brain is a delicate organ
surrounded by fluid. When we hit our head, the fleshy
brain crashes into the hard skull,
damaging the tissues. I find, um, that life has tr— has lost its shine. This is Eltje just one year ago
at the Tour de France. The last thing she remembers before
her accident was cycling on a rural
highway. It's likely she was the victim
of a hit-and-run. An ambulance person actually
drove past the scene and asked whether I'm OK, and I... I said no and collapsed. Medics use the Glasgow Coma Scale to
determine how severe a brain injury
is. When Eltje was assessed, her score
was the lowest possible survivable
rate. Doctors never expected that
she would ever speak again. WOMAN: How are you?
OK, so just hold on
before you do any steps. However, she's been lucky. Now she's anxious
to progress faster. I'm a physio by trade, and I know how much it depends on how much you do yourself. After injury, the first
few months are quite crucial, uh, for your brain
redeveloping new pathways, so I try to do as much
as I can right now. Much better. Someone's brain will continue to
forge those new connections and
pathways, and they'll continue
to change and recover. That early stage, that first
six months, particularly, is where we see — or tend
to see — the most change, and then gradually over time,
it sort of plateaus out a bit. So everything I do, from getting up
to making my breakfast and things,
is rehab. And that's all preparing me to— hopefully it will lead to
an independent life later on. Because my right hand is not good, I try to eat with my right hand, instead of my left. I've been a very independent
living woman before, and, uh, yeah, I'm so dependent
now with every little thing; even going to toilet,
I gotta ask somebody. I want to move back to Te Kuiti, because I've got my own house there, so I want to have
my independence back. Vanessa is TK's mum. When her son had his accident,
she drove her house truck from
the Coromandel, two hours outside Auckland. She's been parked up and living
across the road ever since. She's documented every day
of her son's rehabilitation. They were keeping him alive. Te Kaha
was on life support. He had a huge
impact in his accident. Doctors inserted a bolt
into his brain. A drain was vital to reduce
the swelling and save his life. Became very sick in ICU.
He developed pneumonia. His lung burst, and the next day,
the other lung blew out. Uh, it soon became obvious that his
brain had damaged his left side, so therefore, um, his
limbs started curling. Yeah, he was present,
uh, but still in his coma. TK spent six weeks in intensive care
and then transferred to ABI. In those early stages, that's where
we want a client — in intensive
rehabilitation. So we try and get clients— as soon
as they are medically stable in
hospital, we want them coming
into rehabilitation. I <BLEEP> up my brain real bad. Like, um,... um, the front area and
the back and the side. Yeah, and I bruised my brain
really bad, and, um, yeah. The value of having whanau, family,
involvement here is just so central. And I think particularly from
a psychologist's perspective, in terms of their mood and their
motivation and their well-being, family-whanau are absolutely
central to that, so— and they're often the drivers of
what a client's early goals are
and where they're progressing. And they're going to be the ones
that are there in the long term. Since Terry's truck accident,
little has changed. KEYPAD BEEPS For his wife, Andrea, it's
become a relentless routine of driving the four hours between
Auckland and Kaikohe to be at his
bedside. I had to leave him on Sunday to go
home, and it's the first time since
his accident. It was extremely hard to leave him, but then the nurse said to me,
you know, cos he's in that
confused state, he doesn't have any idea of time
or anything anyway. I've got a pretty good block, so I
just sort of concentrate on now and
don't think about— I mean, every now and then,
like anybody, you know, you'll be sitting at home on your
own, or like last night, driving
home — I left here sort of feeling a little
bit like he wasn't as good as I
wanted him to be, I s'pose. And that's probably another problem
when you go away and come back —
you expect a lot more. Whereas when you're with them the
whole time, you just go with the
flow. SOFT, HOPEFUL MUSIC Yeah, I have two pictures
of everything, so when I take this off,
I can see you twice. (CHUCKLES) So you're once the normal way, like here, and the other picture is rotated
and slightly off to the left. So that is w— Her optic nerves — so the
pathways that run from her eyes back to her visual cortex
at the back of her brain — are all working well. The reason she has double vision is
the input from her eyes, to do with
the way her eyes move, results in her seeing double. They think, uh, that I might not
get my normal eyesight back, but I intend to surprise them. Just another time. Eltje migrated from Germany to
a small NZ town 15 years ago. She was seduced by the
lifestyle and the cycling. But I'd love to do physio again. And thirty— or I should say,
firstly, I want to ride my bike. (EXHALES) (SOBS) I miss that. (SNIFFLES) THOUGHTFUL ACOUSTIC GUITAR MUSIC READS: 'Today,
TK made a breakthrough. 'Uh, TK yelled at me,
"I was in a car crash!"' And that was the day that a lot
of things, um, changed for TK. He went into massive grief. Uh, 'I was in a car crash. Why do
you keep telling me? I was in a
car crash.' He wasn't sleeping. It was just
making him really deranged, and
he was seeing people in the room. He didn't recognise me. He looked at me and said
that I wasn't his mother, and he believed that members of
the family were trying to kill him. So there's an entry here, (READS)
'TK has woken up during the night. 'He's only slept a couple of hours,
and he's crying— he was crying, "Get me out of the car. Get me out
of the car. I can't get out of the
car, Mum." 'And I go up to him, and I just
hug him and hold him and tell him
everything's gonna be OK. 'It's gonna be OK, son.' And at that time, TK was saying
things like, 'Why didn't you kill
me? Why didn't you kill me?' He just didn't wanna live his life.
He knew that his life wouldn't be
the same. All right, Terry, so let's just
review that information we were
talking about. What year are we in? 2012 or 2016? 2012.
We're in 2016. Yeah.
2016. Ashley Stone gives Terry speech
and language therapy every day. We're in the month of August.
Yes. So does that mean it's
summer or wintertime? So one thing that we aim for at ABI
is for clients to emerge from
post-traumatic amnesia, which is a period after an injury in
which someone is unable to make new
memories. And a big part of that is just going
over those key facts of what's the
date, 'um, how old are you, where are you
right now, what city are you in? 'Um, so that's all the information
I was reviewing with Terry, to just
help his emergence from that state.' Looks like I'm kind of bothering him
and I'm keeping— I continue to talk
to him. I'm just trying to get him to
keep that engagement with me,
keep attending to me. So today's Monday.
Monday's s'posed
to be work day, yes. Monday's a work day?
S'posed to be, yes.
Yeah, that's right. She went back to take care
of the dog kennel.
Yeah, thank you. Yeah. People may start
to make new memories, they may start to hold on to new
information, and we'll start to
give them that information, because try to be as open and as
honest with our clients as possible. So we may tell them about their
accident, but they may need to be
told multiple times. They may need to be told
multiple times in a day. Do you know what month
you were born in?
Yes. Oh... Terry?
(SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY) No, you were born in April. OK. Shona Lees is Terry's
occupational therapist. While he's in this state, all the
therapists working with Terry are
essentially doing the same work — trying to bring him
to the here and now. Can you tell me what you
do for a living, Terry? (SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY) Are you a truck driver?
No. You're not?
No.
I think you are. Terry? Terry? At the moment, Terry is in what
we call post-traumatic amnesia, which is a stage which he is unable
to actually be orientated to where
he is or what he's doing. He's quite confused
and quite agitated. He won't know where he is. He won't
recognise probably familiar people. He's talking a lot of words over and
over again. They're not making sense
to us. They may be making sense to him
from before the injury. It's too early for us to actually
say what the outcome will be for
Terry. REFLECTIVE ACOUSTIC GUITAR MUSIC VANESSA: Ah, the huge feats
on Monday the 16th. READS: 'Awesome day today, Te Kaha.
You're a true Shinobi warrior. 'Your feats today are eating;
1.5kg weight on in a week; 'seven minutes in a tilt table; 'your cast off after five days
straight. You did it, man. 'TK looks at people
when they talk to him. 'TK can identify an object, uh, 'out of two to three objects 'and place the object on a place.' Can you tell me
(SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY)? INDISTINCT CHATTER Yeah, I think— Yeah. It's now six months
since his car crash. TK is working on his memory recall
and concentration. So, what we kind of want you guys to
do is just pick an article from the
newspaper, and we've got some printed ones
floating round as well. Try and find something
that interests you. Um, and we'll give you a bit of a
summary sheet that you can write
down some of the key information. If you wanna have a look...
Yeah.
So we'll start with that one, eh? Have a look at the title and see
if it's something that you might
be interested in reading about. Oh, yeah, I'll read this —
one-punch kill. You wanna read that one?
CHUCKLES: Yeah, one-punch kill. The newspaper group is where, um, we
encourage people to work on a whole
range of cognitive skills. So it may be that a person is
having to concentrate in quite
a distracting environment; they're having to use strategies to
process the information that they're
reading. Mine's in Invercargill. Cool.
And, um, a man got killed by getting punched. Mm-hm.
And, um— and John killed Matthew. Oh, John— John went to prison
for... 22 weeks. 22 months.
Oh, months, yeah. 22 months. And, um— And, uh... Matthew's family was distraught. (LAUGHS) MAN SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY >
Yep. (LAUGHS)
MAN CONTINUES SPEAKING > TK knows he's reading a rather sad
article, and yet his reaction is
completely inappropriate. (CONTINUES CHUCKLING) (CONTINUES CHUCKLING) If he's going to go out in the
community, they need to train
him out of this. All right. We might just
take some big deep breaths. >
(CONTINUES LAUGHING) Try and relax a wee bit. >
(CONTINUES LAUGHING) (CONTINUES LAUGHING) So, they might rapidly burst out
into laughter in a situation that's
not particularly funny. I was just laughing too much. I was just having a good time, and they tell me,
'That's wrong to do.' It's just a little bit
interruptive at the moment. Yeah, it's in— in— interrup— Interrupting, yeah.
Uh, it's interrupting other people. We'll just hang out for a couple of
minutes and then head back through
when you're ready. (CHUCKLES SOFTLY, LAUGHS) Since my accident,
everything makes me laugh, and it's really bad, but it's
really good at the same time. I mean, it's bad where— if I'm
in a job— (CHUCKLES) ever in a
job interview. (LAUGHS) Sorry. If I'm in a job interview, like, and I start laughing,
(CHUCKLES) cos— CHUCKLES: cos the guy's
making me laugh. (LAUGHS) I just wouldn't know what to do. I'll just be sitting there— I'll be
like, 'Don't you find this funny,
mate?' (CHUCKLES) (LAUGHS) Oh. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. OK. Let's go.
I'm sorry. Deep breath, TK, OK? It's OK.
Yeah, I know. I'll tell you what, you're probably
just a bit hot, cos it's quite a
lovely day today. Nah, nah, I'm not that hot. I tried not to laugh,
but I couldn't help it. (CHUCKLES) You don't even have to do anything.
You can just be walking out of my
room, and I'll think it's funny. Like, anything a little bit funny, it just makes me laugh. Cos I'm really a pirate. That's what
I like to tell people (CHUCKLES) —
that I'm a pirate. And, um, you know, I gotta keep with the times. And, uh, you know, I'm a pirate. I've never really been on a boat,
but I like to say I'm a pirate. What's your dream, though?
Oh, my dream is, um, to buy a boat
and sail the world. Yeah. Yeah, (SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY)
You hungry yet, mate?
Yes. Ready for tea?
Yes. This is the second time Terry's
family have dealt with the aftermath
of a major car accident. Terry's oldest son, Kevin,
was hit by a car when he was 16. He also endured
traumatic brain injury. 14 years on, his father's accident
is gut-wrenchingly familiar. Having been through this
once before, Terry's family know there is a long
way to go before he's anything like
the guy they once knew. It was, like, the frustration, like, with myself, that I couldn't— couldn't do stuff, and, you know,
Dad's gonna have to go through it. (SOBS SOFTLY)
< (SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY) As simple as talking,
having a conversation, and the language they use is
completely different to what you're
used to and you remember things — like, things you would
take for granted, you know — someone asking you how you were, and
then not knowing how to actually...
< (SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY) (SOBS SOFTLY) It was hard to accept, I guess, and
then as soon as you accept what you
can or can't do, you— it doesn't... upset you so much, I guess.
< (SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY) (SOBS SOFTLY) Probably not many people out there
that have to go through it twice. And he tells us how he felt when he
was confused and couldn't get people
to understand and— and that sort of thing, and he
has found that part quite hard, cos watching his father and knowing
how confused he was at that time. The one that I remember the m— For some reason, I— I'd always
forget the word ankle, and the closest thing I could
think of to ankle was wrist, so I would say 'my foot wrist'. Yeah. And it was— That was pretty
much every word I was stuck on — I would have to go to something
close to it and then try to work
my way back to it, and then go, 'You know what I mean?
You know what I mean?' And, yeah. But, I mean, it still happens to me—
Like, I still have that now, but I've just, like,
accepted it, I guess, and I just move on, and it doesn't—
I can't let it bug me, I guess. Goodnight, guys.
Goodnight.
Goodnight, mate. Goodnight.
Have a good sleep, eh?
Yeah. (MURMURS INDISTINCTLY)
(SOBS SOFTLY) INDISTINCT CHATTER You only get one chance
to live life, and I blew it, because
I had a car crash. And, um— And, yeah, I-I blew it, and, basically, um, I feel that I've had
my second chance now, and, um, yeah, I'm on my second chance of life. SOFT, REFLECTIVE MUSIC In our next episode,
TK prepares to leave. SOFT, HOPEFUL MUSIC And there's hope that
Terry's turning a corner. So, do you know why
you're here, Terry? Truck accident.
Yeah.
