Tradies rally to give stranger Chrissy gift
PAULA Searle only wants one thing for Christmas — her husband to come home.
Now, thanks to a community-driven renovation rescue, her wish is to be granted.
“If you’re ever going to get a family back together, Christmas is the time to do it,” said tradie Sharyn Watson, who has helped engineer a festive homecoming for Jaysen Searle, the Palm Beach cyclist who suffered a devastating brain injury more than a year ago when he collided with a scrub turkey.
“For Paula to do another three-hour round trip (to Brisbane) on Christmas Day to visit her husband would be crap … she just wants him home.”
In the wake of the July 2016 accident that shattered their lives, doctors told Paula her 45-year-old husband “was going to be in a vegetative state for the rest of his life”.
She then endured a months-long battle with Centrelink to see him awarded the disability pension and a distressing period where she was forced to accommodate him at a Tweed aged care home.
Which is why where he is today is cause for celebration.
“The progress is amazing,” Paula said of how far Jaysen has come since moving to a private brain injury rehab clinic in Brisbane.
“He’s gone from doing nothing to moving his arms and legs, and now being able to wash himself. He feeds himself. He actually stood up holding a rail by himself (last week) … he’s always in the gym.
“He’s not talking but he is doing thumbs up for yes and thumbs down for no. He knows all his maths questions. The cheeky bugger even told everyone how old I was the other day.
“He’s still all there. He’s still got his personality. He’s just got a broken body that needs to be fixed.”
While Jaysen will live at the clinic for the foreseeable future, he is now stable enough to return home for short visits, but only if it can accommodate him.
And that’s where a posse of kind-hearted tradies come in.
“I saw their story in the news and thought I could get a few people together to help,” said Watson, who owns Watmar Electrical and Air and founded what she calls The Jaysen Searle Project. “I have mates who are tradies and know how to renovate.”
They are about to start a no-cost, three-stage renovation of the couple’s home.
Property developer Villa World last week came on board to manage the process, which will initially see a few walls demolished to combine a bedroom, bathroom and toilet into one wheelchair-accessible suite.
Then, come the New Year, the focus will turn to opening up hallways and converting the garage into a rehab area for the permanent homecoming Paula yearns for.
“I think it’s dawned on her in the past month that this is forever,” Sharon said of her new-found friend.
“Jaysen is never going to be 100 per cent again. This accident will overshadow their lives together and Paula simply wants him home. She misses him. She misses her husband.”