Yes, I’ve got a good example of this. For example about two years ago, my friend said to me, again I’ve known him more, I’ve known him 36 years of my life from the age of 6. He lives in [place]. He said to me, Come on over, the guys are having a get together you know, at the pub. You can stay the night at mine on Saturday evenin. I said to him, I checked my memory aid and said, Ok, that’s great, [friend’s name], but I’m going out Friday night. I know my stamina-wise I won’t be quite up for it because I’m having a heavy night Friday, do you mind if I give it a miss He said to me, The old Adrian wouldn’t have done that I said, The old Adrian died I felt bad saying that to him, but I had to say to him, Look, I’m not the same person anymore He knows me but he doesn’t know me. Even though he’s known me from the age of 6, I can’t I might want to do that, but I know I can’t do that. I’m aware, I can see, it’s not that I can’t do it. I just don’t know if I can do it or not. I don’t want to say to him, yeah, I’ll be there and then not be there. I want to be reliable. I don’t want to be, oh I’ll do my bes. I’m either there or not.

I said to him, I said to him like, I can’t be there. I think I’ll be tired Oh the old Adrian wouldn’t have said that The old Adrian’s dead. I’m not the same person. I might look the same person, but I know… I felt bad saying it to him, but I had to make sure he was aware that I’m not the same person any more. I’m not. I have the will of the old Adrian, knowing I want to do that. But I don’t know I can do it, which is more like why there’s uncertainty, which is why I don’t want to confirm either way I’d rather not say it.

I guess my life now is normal as I see it. You quickly adapt to a new situation and certainly over time as the years go by it becomes normal. And the fact that, you know, you use a catheter is just normal and the fact that I use a wheelchair is normal. I get up and, you know, the wheelchair is my way of getting about and I’ll go off to various meetings and, and work and, you know, come back at the end of the day and sit on the sofa and have a shower like anyone else. it’s just I guess different ways of doing, doing things. And I think certainly it’s difficult to get used to having to have help on, on certain things, having someone around. That has impact not only on me but, you know, your close family. Having somebody around to help do things slightly alters, you know, your domestic set-up. And, you know, there are frustrations with, you know, not being able to partake in the sports or certain things that I used to do before. But there are, you know, new options of things to do and ways to exercise. And, you know, going on holiday becomes more difficult, but you just have to check that where you’re going has suitable access. And provided you’re fairly adaptable and, and healthy you can, you know, get round most things. So, yes, it’s difficult and there are frustrations along the way. But you realise that there are, many people have different limitations in different ways and there are always going to be limitations, and unfortunately some of mine are more severe than, than most people. But you end up in a situation where your life is what your life is. And you know what you’re doing and, you know, you settle back into a routine. And that’s, you know, how things develop.

And so to build on all this sort of stuff we’re looking at doing quite a lot complementary, activities as well. One of the, you know, we’re trying to hit this thing from numerous angles’ you know, physically getting into a far better shape than I was before, even though I was physically pretty fit earlier, I was still carrying around far too much weight. We’re getting on top of that. That’s moving the right way. We’re improving the, I’m improving the diet that I’m on. I do an awful lot of the cooking around the house because I’m the one with the time, and I also make sure that I make soup, because I like, I’m now decide to make it, sort of the way I’m going to eat going forward, is in the evening that’s all I’m going to have is soup. So, two square meals a day, plus soup, which is working fine.

And as well as that, is generally just trying to be a little bit sort of more focussed and kinder to myself and this is where this, this retreat that I mentioned earlier has sort of come into it. I’ve just come back from a five-day silent meditation retreat at [retreat location] in [place]. Many people were staggered that I was going on it. Because it’s, personality wise it’s just something that I would never do. But I went on it. It took a couple of days to actually get into it and, finally, on day three I realised that I could sit there, yeah, it might only be for five minutes, at a time, and then a little look around and then do another five minutes. But I could sit there, feel that my arms, shoulders, generally my body became extremely relaxed. Things floated into my head. They floated out. It didn’t really matter and that was, ah that’s a way of meditating. That’s fine, it was starting to work.

I used to do a lot of reading in those days, even though I was finding it very difficult to retain the stories, because of my memory problems. I couldn’t watch a film for instance. It was so frustrating, because I couldn’t follow the story. My memory was so impaired. But there was one short book in that year. I think it was the Booker prize winner of that year in 1997. It was the editor of, of the French women’s magazine, Elle. Jean-Dominique Bauby, who himself, he suffered a head injury. I think he had a stroke and he suffered from locked in syndrome. He wasn’t able to communicate in any way, other than by his physiotherapist. He managed to learn by blinking his left eyelid. He used to dictate 40 pages of a book called the Diving Bell and the Butterfly and that book I managed to retain. I read that avidly and I retained what he was going on about. And that motivated me quite a lot. And I thought, if this man, who was suffering such adversity, it made me think, what am I feeling sorry for, and I used that technique as a strategy within work situations after that.

So I’ve always tried to, whenever I’m come across different stages of adversity, throughout this journey of rehab I’ve had, I’ve tried to find the positive in each of those instances and turn it round.

And as it’s turned out it was the most appropriate thing to be done, because as I said nine weeks afterwards you know, back at home, perfectly fine, can put the new leg on, go out for a walk with the crutches. it’s healing well, you know, and everybody is very pleased with the progress, because as I said earlier, of having this very fixed care pathway – you do that, and you do that, then you do that. I wasn’t, you know, I was expecting to take a bit longer knowing older, lots of surgery that potentially would take a bit longer, but as it’s turned out I’ve actually sort of stayed on the milestones of the care pathway, you know, of out in the chair that day, first physio that day, first leg casting at three weeks, wearing it at four weeks, checked. And so I’ve actually gone along very well, and as I said last week when I saw the consultants, you know, they gathered everybody together again to actually look at it, what it looked like afterwards and they were saying, Well yes, that was the right decisio because, you know, I’m taking now a quarter of the painkillers that I was and most of those are actually on reducing doses, you know, a planned reduction down to the aim of being back for, you know, paracetamol now and then for the leg obviously the rest of my body’s aches and pains aren’t relevant, but, you know, specifically for that it’s going really, really well.

I just get on with it now. Before, like before the actual plate was put, when I was like able to go to the shops and stuff like that with the dip, it was like everyone kept looking and stuff like that. And I didn’t care at all. But now I feel like, oh imagine if I’d still had it and stuff like that, and now it’s just, well get on with it. I’ve got a scar on my head, you know, what I mean?

So before you had the plate put in the bone had been removed and hadn’t been replaced, so you could very definitely see?

Oh yeah, everyone kept looking. At the time I wasn’t at all fussed. I couldn’t care less about what people were looking at. I would start laughing at them rather than like being like angry or stuff like that. Because I was saying, I just kept thinking, yeah, I’m getting, in a month I’m getting a new one. So do you know what I mean? I just thought, forget it. Getting a new one, so you lot can laugh or stare at the moment, but when I’m back to normal I’ll have a nice, not nice but I’ll have a scar there. So it’s people now that they probably do think, oh look at that guy with the scar, but again, again it doesn’t bother me at all. You know, literally at all. I couldn’t care less, what people will think. Because obviously people think and look and stuff like that, but to me it’s not a problem at all, especially after what I’ve been through. Again I couldn’t care less. But just be happy like.

Yeah, I mean from what I’ve experienced in the 17 years since my injury is such that I think, the disability is one thing, but it’s all about psychology and I think if you’re surgically fixed and then a week or two later there’s a wheelchair by your bed. I think that’s quite a leap psychologically to go from being very active to being suddenly having a chair thrust upon you. I think after two months you’re kind of grateful there is a chair, because you just want to get out of bed, and so for me, it seemed to be, it seemed to work. It seemed to help that psychological process.

And also the fact that that factored into a very slow rehab in terms of 51 weeks these days that would be 30 weeks, if that. So I think it gave me enough time to provide the building blocks to the rest of my life by having a lot of education, lots of time to think, talk, share time with other people that were going through it as well. So I think that slow approach has seen me to the extent this day. I think if I tried to rehab in three months I would be then being chucked out into the community. That might be a very different thing entirely as to how well I might have done.

And I told you earlier as well, you know, like I’ve been through years, many, many years, of soul searching. Trying to understand why I couldn’t do things. Why I was having difficulty with other areas. Until I developed different strategies to see how I could address different projects at work.

At the start you said that you realised that you were a different Raymond to the Raymond before?

Yes.

How were you different?

Well I often talk about this as being the biggest death in a brain injury; it’s the death of the person themselves I used to be very, very confident, you know, almost this’s where my word finding comes back to haunt me again almost arrogant, right? And, you know, that had its positives in the fact that I can do anything, I could do whatever I wanted to do. And even if I didn’t know how to do it, I could at least brag it, you know, blag it whatever it’s called, you know. But when I came round from the coma, I realised just how difficult it was for me to speak. My self-confidence took a huge hit because I could no longer speak at the speed at which I thought, which was the person, the way I was before.

Was there a particular sort of moment of realisation? Was there anything that made, one instance in time where you thought actually I am different and I hadn’t realised it before?

You know, as a sane person, right, as you are Anne-Marie, right, as a normal person right. That’s the kind of rationale you would have in your head. Unfortunately, I’ve been living with this now since ’98. How long ago is that now? 13 years, yes, 13 years. And over those years it’s been a gradual kind of emasculation for me in terms of realising certain things. So it’s been over a long period of time. It’s not as though you wake up some mornings thinking…It’s different, you know, it must be different, you know. It’s because of the constant bombardment of ideas in your head. The realisation that you can’t do certain things. You can do other things. You’re good in certain areas, you’re not so good in other areas. That you realise there’s a, you’re a different person.