How I Survived a Brain Injury | An Ordinary Life. | Only Human

[Music] this is a story of Stefan Hadfield an extreme sportsmen who's always pushed beyond the limits his latest achievements have astounded the world's medical profession as he recovers from a brain injury he should never have survived a major skiing accident in Canada had left Steffen unable to walk or talk because my memory got wiped out my brain got wiped out I don't know what I don't know but he used to know for the past two years we've followed Stefan's remarkable progress as he swung between a child facing life for the first time and a man of exceptional talents I did used to be amazing at a lot of different things I used to be a genius at lots of things and really good at not just one or two sports but like 10 to 20 sports Stefan's accident says much about the brain's ability to recover I mean if you can imagine somebody coming at you with a very large hammer and beating you on their head it's something like that I mean I made it pretty clear that if he did survive there was going to be a reach answer he's gonna be feeling majorly impaired when he was getting better recovering it was like watching a two-year-old grow up to a late teenagers within a few months the trauma to Stefan's brain means he'll never be quite the same again no one knows when the recovery will end and the events of the past two years puzzle even Stefan it was just an unlucky thing maybe it's like I was meant to have this new life meant to have this whole new extreme learning experience that I'm having now [Music] if you think about what makes up our brain it's made of millions and millions of brain cells each cell connects for thousands and thousands of other cells we know there are a lot of chemicals a lot of neurotransmitters but we don't understand how they were at 24 Stephan Hadfield was a super man admired by his mates a university graduate he had a mathematical mind and was a qualified geologist he was sought out by a group of international extreme adventurers to take part in a challenge never attempted to traverse pole to pole using only manpower the trip had taken him to Canada for training even there he instantly became leader of the pack he stood out straight away he was talking about playing chess in your head so you don't actually have a chessboard and pieces you just remember where all the pieces ago he just said are real just do it attitude I think coping physical a really warm and supportive of people someone that was a bit different to you every day kind of like he had lots of integrity what does have lots of integrity so he was a great leader on March the 1st 2007 stiff-arm Erskine on these slopes at Whistler Canada with him two of his friends Dave Hindley and Eric Hughes the three dear Devils had gone off piste and search of the highest drop-offs these boys thought nothing of plunging over her face 40 metres high it was just it was just a fun morning skiing you know in beautiful terrain and having fun and laughing and just doing what you do in your skiing you know there was 50 some steep stuff and it was the thing we did a couple of double diamonds but it wasn't actually a what I mean there was some pretty big big stuff we did sniff I was like come on let's go faster a lot of time so he was a it was goading Urich on the whole day it was quite funny I used to better like do three six these was jumping just all sorts of fun stuff like that Stefan's life changed at a moment suddenly hit here at Collette just if just screamed from it was Wepa bub me but they're not skied down quite a long way he just felt that Stefan's fallen CFANS fallen Stefan had been skiing at speed along an icy ledge when he career down a cliff face smashing his head on a rock before colliding into a tree and I was just really really surreal from that moment on Stefan's brain injury is described as the most severe ever seen on Whistler other skiers who sustained injuries of this level have died and he was just moaning straightaway he could tell he wasn't at all well it really felt like he was gonna start breathing any second so we made the decision to move him basically I got a bit of a change underneath this tree that we could lay him and he started to hurt when we moved to me had a broken happen whole lot of other things are probably a pretty sore head and then his eyes were just open he was still conscious a little bit and it just looked like he was screaming out from inside his body going what's just heaven this is wrong I want to get out of here I don't know what's gonna happen from here I don't know if it's gonna be really very brain damage I don't know if it's gonna be did this could be the English different and then before we knew there was doctors everywhere they've never blood everywhere it doesn't have massive injuries in his face he was just drooling and and making quite a noise but quite quickly after that he went quite calm they spent I think nearly an hour and a half on the snow with him stabilizing him so that certainly we're in a hurry to move him because things were so critical I guess I had my camera with me and actually a foot felt about more but doing it because I thought focus the camera and takes photos of their mate when they're injured about at the same time I thought well actually this could be really helpful later on for Stefan or for his family in Hamilton New Zealand Stefan's dared John Hadfield took the call he'd always dreaded I got a phone call from one of the guys up here friend of Stefan's and it was pretty difficult to hear actually I think I had two three or four teams to get the whole message through but even on the first call that was Stefan's been skiing something or other and you know I could just tell it wasn't about we had a good day when it's a head injury you know you just think well this is got to be really serious it was a full 24 hours before John could get hold of a doctor to learn if his son was alive or dead I mean they just said straight away you know we were you how long before you get here it's it's very serious we're not sure he yeah we can survive him we're just keeping those messages at that stage when girlfriend Madeleine took a call she excitedly expected to hear Stefan's voice instead it was his friend telling me the most terrible news I've ever had in my whole life when Stefan's head smashed into the tree the force had shattered both sides of his skull he had frontal damage to the left side of his brain and damage to the back of the brain with some vision processing as done Stefan was rushed by helicopter to Vancouver General Hospital via swelling and pressure escalated inside Stefan's brain doctors recorded it as out of control surgeons inserted a tube deep inside his brain to drain the central canals if you put a drain and you can remove some of the fluid and allow the brain to have a bit more space to swell it also means you can monitor the pressure inside the head because they would have been giving him drugs and treating him to relieve the pressure inside his head the hospital model of Stefan's skull shows the extent of damage caused by the impact of his accident it left his entire brain traumatized no one truly believed he could survive when it smacked against the rock this fragmented he would have had fragments going into the brain you would have had lacerations there would be a very high danger of infection if you think of the brain as being a jelly inside a box with a serrated inside this inside is of nice and smooth it's actually quite rough and so the axons for nerve fibers become twisted broken or distorted John Hadfield flew 28 hours from New Zealand to Canada and feared her son might not be alive when he got there nothing could prepare him for the state Stefan was in when we arrived you know who's plugged in to be pretty gadget imaginable the doctor saw us and outlined the situation and you know reiterated that it was really serious and and he didn't know what the outcome would be within the first few days Stefan underwent emergency surgery twice as doctor strived to stop the hemorrhaging inside his brain everyone questioned what quality of life you might have I mean I made it pretty clear that if he did survive there was it was going to be every chance he's gonna be feeling majorly impaired so I mean we even had a discussion at that stage of how do you make the call on [Music] whether Stefan would have a life stolen even he would be happy with you know Stefan suffered a severe enough injury I think that the vegetative state might be the outcome people are very variable that's why it's so difficult to predict initially whether somebody's going to survive and to make those decisions in the first hours or days and hospital is very difficult for the doctor and the family three days later stiff-arm was suffering from pneumonia his brain was now so swollen doctors feared the pressure would cut off all brain function killing him they had no choice and a desperate effort to reduce the swelling Stephan was placed on a mattress chilled to near freezing temperatures for days doctors wrote a fine line between accelerating the pneumonia and reducing the swelling 19 days after his accident Stefan stood from his coma relief turned to horror when his family realized how severely brain-damaged Stefan was he had virtually no vision no speech and absolutely no idea where he was who they were or who he was I think the only thing we could do was deal with each moment as it came really trying to think too far ahead didn't really help a month after his accident there's no longer a question of survival but his recovery was only beginning when Stefan tried to walk first time it was just like starting absolutely from scratch you know when when their little leg to sort of get up and have a go and do a few little tottering steps and things and this time he was just he was quite weak you know from from I guess not having used his body for a little while and and I think there was a sense of a sense of the as if the body somehow knew what it was trying to do but just couldn't kind of get it really together having spent 100 days in Vancouver hospital doctors judged Stefan strong enough to be flown back to New Zealand to continue his treatment close to family my first memory was when we landed in New Zealand I asked are we in New Zealand now the answer was yes good girlfriend Madeleine had spent weeks waiting to be reunited with Stefan but the accident had obliterated his memories of their time together I remember her from before the accident and part of what I lost though was exactly what her name was I just I knew the girl that I'd met about six months before the excellent and I just knew how much she meant to me and then when I saw her again finally I just said hello hello girl I didn't know what her name was and that took me quite a long time to get back to knowing Madeline had expected to care for Stefan but as a girlfriend not as his mother when I had the accident that's when they brought me back to being like a young child because I thought I was three years old at the time I just everything was just going around around around in my head I didn't know much girl it's been a quite a journey in that respect because you go from it first somebody who is learning to do all the basic functions all over again and I mean that's you know from from fundamental is breathing for himself again you tend to sort of think of the physical milestones but the cognitive ones are huge as well you know just the whole thing of making sense of the world again [Music] for him communicating and learning words I mean you know at first he was making up his own words at times and even a couple of them we kind of got to understand what it might mean [Music] it's not exactly like a baby but it's like someone who's taking first steps at everything all over again and so you very much in need of support and then you have to be sort of here to help them do everything I was 21 when I met him that's quite young I'm aware I'm aware that somebody having such an accident I could have just easily moved on and wipe the dust off my shoulders and said oh well what a pity but I just thought I'd be patient and see what happened three months after the accident Stefan's life was again at risk weak and fragile he contracted a hospital superbug it attacked the area of his head that had slammed into the rock the massive bone fragments and brain tissue became grossly infected again his head swelled forcing his eyes shut his condition became critical to stop the infection spreading surgeons removed all of the fractured bone leaving a gaping hole in a skull his brains only protection today as a synthetic plate now I can knock both sides and that feels fine it feels normal nothing strange if I poke in here it's safe for my finger there I don't want to push because that I could push my finger in there that's the one spot that could be a bit risky back home he grows strong once more but huge chunks of his former life are blanked seemingly forever Madeline believes she can make a difference an abandoned tertiary study to help stiffen relearn she spends days and weeks playing board games children's games and memory games we always used to play things like hangman or guess which utensil he was holding when he was drying the dishes and I was washing them that kind of crazy stuff that you do with little kids and I'm glad they didn't last forever we were together six months only before his accident so we were pretty much in that honeymoon stage and everything was fantastic and yeah couldn't have been happier and then something so tragic can happen the process of his recovery has puzzled everyone there were so many gaps in his understanding of day to day life we don't understand what the circuitry is for those different things or where exactly some of those things are in his brain so it's it's hard to know what has been damaged and what hasn't and what things over time Stefan has now adjusted and learned to do it using different pathways Marlo Leila mijo pre-accident Stephan spoke a dozen languages words trickled back but he has no idea which language is using hello all of the brain has such incredible interconnection and pathways it's not a case of okay well that's the only bit damaged so everything else will be fine it's just far more complex than that so I think it's really a wait-and-see game as to you know what the person is going to be able to do or what they're going to have difficulty with afterwards guten tag I tried not to have any expectations cuz I didn't know what was to be what was to come I just kept an open mind about it and I took one day at a time as I think we all did because nobody knows nobody knew and each brain injury is completely different from the next and even the most high up their neurologists can't really tell what the future will be I thought about what I couldn't do that would be depressing I think about what I can do and because I loved things I can do that's what motivates me to get better quicker if you remember what our transmissivity is of an aquifer so the formulas P equals Kb remember that No okay Stephon once knew complex mathematical equations now he's forgotten even simple things he's having to completely relearn the sort of music and clothes he likes even the food he likes to eat yet some pretty strange eating habits he would survive on those liquid meals for starters and he need any old anything that was sweet and he'd mix tomatoes and grapes and start with anything was dessert and sort of I don't know it was it was a really strange mixture but because he had no memory whatsoever we could encourage him to have a mouthful of one thing and they need you know he'd sort of clearly didn't lease really like that we give him something else then go back to that first thing again and he wouldn't have known it was a not something for the first time now I know what I like I know which colors are like I know which food I like I know what activities I like a year on more than 70% of his vision has returned his vision is not bad at the moment and he will get a little bit better still so there's not much further he needs to go from that pure eye perspective but from the neurological development he may find he's got small work to do so when I had my crash and I was in the hospital I could not see anything below halfway it was like this so all around I just couldn't see anything below I could see above but it was quite blurry and then with time it got better so I can see everything around me except for this one little triangle down below and what I see is it's not bright it's not dark it's just nothing it's like blurry brownie gray most of the time Stefan skiing mate Dave Henley is home it's Dave's second visit to Stefan but last time Stefan had no idea who Dave was yes so what so what's it like seeing these images these new memories or old memories whenever he's confronted with something from the past Stefan sees it as a challenge so this whole process over giving back to some of these memories is not just a new thing for me the photos help trigger memory but only fragments I keep enjoying the bet so sir oh yeah because the stuff that links up to more than just the basic photos yeah it links up to experience experience experience yeah and that's what's get down through these bowls yeah so we were still quite all right yep so stuck what I out me didn't my roly-poly up there mm-hmm and you reckon these chasey yeah so from theater there's been nothing 40 meters yeah vehicle in the space of you know two hours everything had everything had changed mmm-hmm don't know I have no memory no peeve of being skiing at Whistler yeah but you know really nice to hear the story isn't she the photos I guess the more the more I hear the more I'll at least have the info and laid and I'm keen to go check it out yeah yeah cool yeah for sure just probably not too soon it was huge for a run in pole to pole it would have been huge if it was anyone but particularly Stefan because he was such a person LD and such a yeah a leader John and I made it just a real simple snowman and we just started making the snowman bitter we didn't really talk about it or think about it and just happened it was just the big monument this defo yeah and then we stood back and went whoa had a bit and it was the Sun this big big dude like holding this holding it has a bigger-than-life great you were you know still in the coma a stage yeah [Music] Madeline has stayed by Stefan side for two years now they're off on a camping trip just like the old days months of patience have paid off he's a real boyfriend again a little more quirky she didn't just go oh well and and move on she's stuck with me she stayed with me and the fact that I came back I literally couldn't do the walking and talking for a while and I couldn't really eat I didn't really know much about myself my history or anything but she stuck with it she stuck with me the whole time you just had just take a step back and just be friends again and that was for quite some time but you could tell that he knew the difference between me and other friends you know like he was more emotional towards me she believed in miracles and I because of that belief from her end got to the point of achieving that miracle which seems like to me now it seems straightforward but when I think about what actually went towards life how do I do that I went from not having a proper head nothing out of breathe see or hear and Here I am I can be silly again I'm happy I can be silly now I yeah I find it really easy it's just it's like having a normal boyfriend in are legally stiffens unable to drive that's a cause of frustration he's got to a point where he's done most of his recovery every day you could see before that he was definitely learning and recovering but now you think to yourself I wonder if he's learning anymore but actually he is he's still learning and I think it will take maybe another two or three years until he's maybe back to where he started as far as what I have managed to do since being unable to walk or talk it's always amazing at how easy I find them or how I sometimes see something see if photos of myself or hear a story about myself and I'm kind of I really I used to do that okay and so I gave it a go good and surprisingly I can do it a little bit better than others around me can and not quite as good either they used to I've just been happy about learning what I couldn't couldn't do and then achieving some of them beyond what I thought I could do now okay ready yeah I'm ready [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] stephane never knows when a former talent is going to re-emerge a year earlier he didn't even know what a guitar was now he's playing better than he used to [Music] buy some cheese but they didn't have a flavor that I pleased so we settled for budget instead I think it kind of tastes like plastic crude plastic it's quite fantastic for some of those tasks like climbing and guitar playing coming back I don't know exactly what's Booker Qi is like you say sure sure mmm thank you and Booker Qi no problem all right I think the reason that it might have happened is because I started learning those when I was young and so I've had a lot of experience and my lifetime wise would those but you're not because you know all the time the first time is giving a guitar I didn't know what it was I didn't know how to play it and that was my yeah how do you explain it so like if you're listening to a song on a CD you always like finger picking to it and then about two weeks later I was handled it again and I played the song I've just managed to pick it up to a level that is once again beyond what people thought I was capable of with the injury [Music] as time goes by it's harder and harder to remember the differences between what he used to be like and what he is now and that's for two reasons one because this home grows by you just forget about your past and you could feel busy concentrating on the now and the future but the other reason is because he's just growing so fast that he's more like him what he used to be anyway yeah he's still that same person up till now he's been like a toddler now Stefan's becoming teenage like despite the rest to his skull he's hankering for adventure he's convinced everyone around him that he should be allowed to enter a bike race I found out that it was a race up the mountain and its distant 17 kilometers climbs just over a kilometre in height I thought better be fun challenge the riders up Mount Ruapehu the highest mountain in New Zealand's North Island well it's called the Cooney climber which is a race up mount ruapehu to a ski area at 17 kilometers and distance it goes from 697 meters to 1780 meters so it's just over a kilometer in height just altitude I worked out the average angle of that would be twenty two point six degrees that'll be interesting challenge for me considering my very low level of training today I think it's fantastic that Stefan is going to get back into such events that's what he kind of lives for whereas once Stefan would be out to win he claims he's now happy to simply take part before he he was very much someone who said why not be the best at something ought to be really good at something now now it's like if he gets the chance to do a lot of these things and do them well again that's a pretty good target so there's a little little change in the other thing cool thank you that's just one year younger than me that a lot of people here have got prepared with their cycle shirts on their cycle pants they look like they're really [ __ ] cycling I'm pretty serious too because I'm wearing orange and that's my favorite so I think that's the key things to be happy I think happiness is the key to doing well but I'm not an extreme dresser for those events often so I tend to like to wear stuff I like rather than what is gonna be beneficial for the event itself I like the orange pants I like the orange t-shirt I like the or intact there's one reason for that I like orange cool thanks I'll be timing here [Music] I think seafoam will do considerably well under the circumstances he doesn't exactly have the high quality gear he doesn't have a performance bike and that does make a huge difference I think he'll he won't come first but he definitely won't come last yeah he's pretty sick [Music] before the excellent I found it amazing the sort of things that he was capable of actually so when he had this it just seemed to me such a shame that someone who'd been sort of right at the peak of his capability and in doing so many things quite an amazing fish and should get it suddenly made solo but you know that's that was his situation and so every time he made a a positive step it seemed such a neat thing like this also that he beat not just the accident but he had a second trauma with a nonfiction area brain and subsequent complications so he's managed to come out of all of that if I think of being in some of the situation's he's been in and I think about that for myself I can't conceive of handling it like the way he seems to stiffen constantly promotes himself and his recovery to anyone who will listen and part he needs to remind himself how well he's doing housing a cone for nineteen days that's all and better walk or talk or anything don't think I could see something I couldn't live I did get a little bit tired when I was talking cuz I was like telling quite a lot and he said a couple of words back and I talk talk talk talk talk and I still fell okay so I kept talking maybe a bit more work out but I thought it was nice to share information rather and try that be them [Music] some guy just passed me no he must be in a hurry [Music] the Finnish destination already I thought we were about 2/3 or 3/4 up I made it from bottom to top I'm alive I smile unhappy [Music] Stephan's often striving to impress Madeline she can tell he's frustrated by his limitations never really seen a man cry much but I've seen tears in his eyes he gets concerned he's he's not one to admit being in a negative way but he has been and he usually brings me up if I'm down so even if he's down so I do that I'm back for him he gets worried sometimes and he has said to me on a couple of occasions that he just wants to impress me the way he used to impress me and I said well you still do impress me but I think he just feels like he's on show the whole time it's like a combination of love and desire and wishes that I like it's kind of everything it's like our combination has some kind of infinite havin that over there I need to improve my vocab still the stress of new memories flooding his brain is tiring in the two years Stefan's had a series of seizures it's as if his brain gets overloaded the first seizures we thought might be just related to the infection because that was at the time when he was in the hospital back in New Zealand and and he had the swelling and so it it seemed a possibility that it might only be related to that seeing as he hadn't had anything before there but then he went seven months without a seizure unfortunately didn't hit the next one until after he had the plastic protection put back and as he did so and then another four months later he had another one it was a similarity that they were both at night and after being of doing strenuous things and both involving vision processing Stefan wants to get us driver's license back under New Zealand law he must have gone 12 months without a seizure it's been eleven and a half months since he last collapsed vision is picking up yeah I like this track wheels you sing that yeah for sure I just see everything in the driver's seat ease and control but there's concern about his vision we need to get the medical clearance because of you I kept so you get that from you GP yeah I think that we should also make sure that you do have the visual clues from the visual fitness to drive as well yeah and that will be from an optometrist or ophthalmologist yes I really like the fact that I can drive mm-hmm and I did quite well today with it yeah yeah we will be making a recommendation that you do return to driving you know following medical clearance visual play oh yeah they roommates our sessions would just be nice a week later Stefan has another massive seizure he won't be able to drive for another year Matt and I were both young he was sitting there eating his dinner and so he pointed up on the Romans and then in that five or six seconds I just had thought thought thought thought thought thought thought would come into my head a lot of it was of information from back at uni and then we realized you know paying all this not just pondering he's actually starting to hit like it's shaking and it just oh wait don't don't don't don't don't invade and that was amazing experience like it reminded me what I used to know and didn't remove now just all came boom and once like I like fifty megabytes of information went into my head at once and it was not long after that that I said I did two girls it couldn't focus and Medlin was holding up finger saying how many fingers am i holding and it was a teen past a journey he couldn't count the fingers and then it took quite a long time before he was fully aware of what really happened I think so five minutes after the seizure that's when I started responding to their questions they asked me and I became back to realizing who I was where our life and was told we were just heaven the next day or two I think I've noticed differences you know and so I think it was really quite hard on his body and brain stiffens brain injury has left him without insight into his own behavior he doesn't know when he's been difficult he often lacks motivation and even the ability to plan his day he thinks he's invincible and he doesn't realize how much of his abilities have been lost he presents as a little eccentric [Music] there are shifts but lot of them is all character is still there and again you know I think it's still changing the time even tone of voice has changed when it fears to used to laugh a lot in our kind of different tone as a it seemed like a cover-up for not knowing what else to do I was expecting all kinds of possibilities of aggression and all the rest of it and I don't see that at all when you have a severe brain injury there are certain things that are never the same even if you make a good recovery so much of the brain has been affected that the person you are and your personality the way you react to things around you the way you behave which defines you as a person is not the same because your emotions will be different and your behavior will be different so you will actually seem like a a slightly different person three years ago Stephan Hadfield was one of New Zealand's finest rock climbers he held the world record for Dino jump were a climber leaps from one rocky outcrop to another extreme sports were his them he's decided he's ready to get out there again it's a massive risk he can't afford to fall but he's chosen to climb a ridge rated suitable for experts only climbing for Stefan was such a hit so ingrained that somehow those connections came back quite really it's like he already knew what it was he was trying to recover and so it wasn't a matter of learning at the first time was like he already knew he just had to go and redo it five started climbing when I was young when I was 14 and I suddenly got very very good quite quite quickly and that just kept happening the whole time till I was one of the best in the country that's not like I had to be the best I just liked it so much that was a reason for it as far as being the best in the country now I don't really mind so much I'm not keen to be that good I'm just kidding to climb and I want to climb to like I want to be in places I like I don't want to achieve things that are beyond what is the level I'm at now I'm just came to have fun I'm keen to enjoy life rather than have goals that are beyond normal I don't know if he could confidently just step back into his hydrology work because there are some elements missing they can be relearned he's lucky enough to be able to retain stuff that he learns again he's still quite an intelligent person he still was able to teach me things that I don't know but the things that are missing are very random yep that's rude now Richard left-hand alphabet stiffens are where he can't return to his job as a hydrogeologist he's considering mentoring others who have a disability possibly in rock climbing to the right to the right to the right I've decided of the extremely competitive sport of stuff and more keen to rather than compete with people to offer what I have back to teach others to help them improve so to be a coach drove and an athlete he's good at knowing what he wants he's good at making ideas up about where he wants to be in his life and what I'd like to do I have had problems with computers and DVDs and things when I'm tired so I don't want to get too involved with that kind of work I'd like to do something that's more physical he does struggle with putting the plan together there are little steps along the way and so I usually help him or his father we all help saying these are the steps if you want to be a climbing instructor you've got to ring this person to organize it and you've got to practice and then you've got to self assess yourself and then when the time comes you have to do it it's quite straightforward and he goes yep yep sweet okay but when the time comes he just can't pick up that telephone and he just there's something inside of him that's that he just can't do it he needs some help with that I just don't know exactly what its gonna be like when I'm off on my own doing my own job with my only encounter with my own rent and phone bills and things that's a little bit unknown right now he was a very intelligent person and it sounds really harsh to say that he was but the truth is is that he has lost maybe as hard to to judge but maybe a third of what he did no he knows that he used to be smarter than what he is now but I think sometimes he overestimates himself by thinking that he knows more than he actually does because he doesn't remember what he doesn't know a second winter has come around and Stefan has not yet revisited the ski slopes his father hopes he never will I wouldn't encourage him to do there over other things I think I'd like to I'd like to see him be able to have a go but not necessarily focus on it and not take the big risks for that as for the skiing I'm a little bit worried about that I think that skiing is a sport which might not be so suitable for him because of his vision it's a bit of a nightmare for all of us huh padronis ski field near Queenstown is holding the annual Sports Festival for disabled sports men and women if there's ever a safe time to give skiing the go it's now with a team of paramedics on-site because I have no memory of the crash or have anything negative about skiing I'm not afraid of it at all I'm rather than being afraid I'm keen [Music] this is not the pattern of skiing areevo I don't remember putting the gear on I remember skiing I'm really actually out there with the fresh air with the scenery with everything the process is good coming back to ski first in a long time it's just like didn't do think first to link up for me just nice to you back into that sort of addictive love mode that I've been missing for quite a while now I guess we haven't been in a hurry just to see him do that just purely because of the nature of of what it is it's going fast over uneven territory or he could have an excellent mmm that is here in the ski shop he needs help to figure out what size boots he takes and how they fit but you can't hold him back it's nice to be safe in the helmet these days you know I'm not gonna break my head again Stephan's now accepted his disability he talks in terms of having been reborn since his accident I've learnt a lot from it and that's created my life into a more positive life that I'm in there and I think that's just like sure it blew him back a long way but I managed to come back from that and I'm doing really well and because of that experience I've now learned a lot more I understand a lot about what happens sort of after life - because I essentially was in that process for a moment and it's just it's nice to be back I can be a proper human again the quirky side of Stephan remains and you never quite know where a conversation with stiff-arm will hear I think more than one color I just think every color possible I think orange is a good one I think every color is nice every color different people have different perspectives and some people like ours some people hate orange I think that everything is good whatever people like or dislike it's all open to opinion I think whatever people think is good as for Stefan the Superman it seems he had a miraculous escape on that mountainside in Canada [Music] nice to feel about the rhythm is again get familiar with it [Music] and who's early in life Stefan was a ski instructor in Switzerland I thought I maybe have a little bit of difficulty giving getting back into that grid skin mode but now it just happened naturally the skein has come straight back to them I just felt I just it was that's the way to do it so I wasn't thinking about that it just happened I was really keen to see if I could skate but one of the things I was keen for was to know if when I'm skiing whether I get a memory back to when I had the crash whether it would just take me back to something from just before whether it would bring back good memories or something it didn't bring it anything negative back at all I still have no memory of the skiing when I crashed I just remember all the good stuff I did before it Stephan's back doing what he's always done enjoying life having fun and not taking anything too seriously it's just nice to be back skiing just back doing one of the things I love to do one of the many things I have to do but it was the one that sort of finished me off that's didn't finish me completely I can start again [Music] you

Channel: Only Human

Views: 188,992

Keywords: brain injury recovery, celebrating diversity, disabled but able, documentary film, fighting against all odds, hope and resilience, incredible resilience, inner strength, inspiring individuals, life-changing accident, mental health journey, motivational journey, never give up, overcoming obstacles, personal growth, personal triumphs, positive mindset, rehabilitation journey, showcasing resilience, tales of resilience

Id: ISxPirJiNJo

Length: 54min 9sec (3249 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 16 2018