Life after a brain injury
Dale Henley is making a remarkable recovery after a mountain biking accident. But the service which helped him is closing. Cecile Meier reports.
Dale Henley is making a remarkable recovery after a mountain-biking accident. But the service that helped him is closing.
Dale Henley cannot remember flying over his handlebars and landing on his head. The days before the mountain biking accident are blacked out. Henley woke in hospital after four nights in a coma and learned to walk, talk and eat again. Eight weeks were wiped from his memory.
But after so far making a strong recovery, he has learned that the clinic which helped rehabilitate him is closing down.
Henley’s fiancee and best friend wrote details of his recovery in a journal for him. This is how the Christchurch mechanic and father pieced together what he has been through.
Henley broke five vertebrae and suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) on a Christchurch Port Hills track 10 months ago. He has been told people usually need about 18 months before returning to work, driving and talking normally again after such an injury, but he is already doing this and more.
While he has given up bike racing for good, he has been on his pushbike and motorbike again.
Henley was 50 metres into the public track when he fell on the first jump. He was riding with his fiancee’s son Isaiah Piper, 16 at the time, who had just completed a first aid course.
Piper called 111, put an unconscious Henley in the recovery position, and kept him breathing.
A Christchurch Hospital anaesthetist happened to be riding on the Victoria Park track that day. She helped paramedics insert an IV line in Henley’s foot after several failed attempts, then firefighters carried him out of the bush to a waiting rescue helicopter.
When he arrived at the hospital, Henley scored 6 on the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS), a scoring system used to gauge the severity of an acute brain injury. Zero means dead, and 16 means no injury. A score under 8 means a severe TBI, which can result in long-term physical, cognitive and emotional damage.
Doctors told his fiancee he might not survive and might not remember her. Henley did remember everyone around him, but could not talk, walk or eat.
‘‘I was like a baby. I had to learn how to do everything again.’’
He spent another week in the neuroscience ward before transferring to a rehabilitation unit for two months.
The five-bed facility, run by The Laura Fergusson Trust, will close in November due to a funding change from ACC and a drop in demand. When Henley read about the closure, he felt compelled to share his story.
About 15 staff will likely lose their jobs and patients from Canterbury, the West Coast, Nelson and Marlborough will have to travel to Dunedin, Wellington or Auckland for rehabilitation.
Henley credits the unit and its team of physiotherapists, speech therapists, psychologists, nurses and doctors with his recovery.
‘‘They taught me how to be human again. Hands down if it wasn’t for [the] Laura Fergusson [Trust], I wouldn’t be back at work today. They had so much respect for me as a person. They pushed me and made me feel like I had something to live for.’’
His dad, a gardener, was so grateful to the trust he has offered to work on its garden for free.
Having his fiancee, friends and family by his side during his rehabilitation made a huge difference, he said. He could not have had the same level of support had he travelled to another city for treatment.
His fiancee sat with him for hours, reminding him of the details of his life and reassuring him. He was able to see his 9-year-old son regularly.
Losing the Christchurch rehabilitation unit would be a ‘‘massive loss’’ and he worried other patients would not have the same chance at recovery.
Henley returned to work about two months ago on reduced hours and has started biking again, but will be staying on the ground.
He still needs lots of rest and sleep, occasionally forgets what he is talking about mid-sentence and cannot multitask, but is putting all of his energy into his family.
An ACC spokeswoman said it was common for people to travel for specialist services, such as to brain injury, spinal cord and burns units.
ACC was revising how it funded the traumatic brain injury services, which were highly specialised and cost a lot to run, she said. It was not seeking another provider for the Canterbury contract.
Last year ACC received more than 7300 claims for mountain bike-related injuries, nearly 1500 of which were from Canterbury – the worst region in the country.