2008-04-22T17:12:00.000-07:00

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Living Life in the Third Dimension ......

I was up working on a landscape construction site at Noosa Heads on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland in Australia for a friend of mine called John. This was early December 1995. We were staying down the coast further at Peregian Beach with one of John’s relatives. We had only been there two days and several of us went boogie-boarding in the surf after work. As a consequence I came off my board in the shallow surf, hitting the sand with my forehead and apparently John had to virtually carrying me out of the water with blood running from my nose. He eventually got an ambulance to Nambour Hospital about half an hour away. This radical, life changing day was on the 4th of December 1995.

.... Peregian Beach where I had my accident
on the 4th of December 1995 …... a quiet long
beach of sand and small waves .....

I stayed in Nambour till 6th December when I was flown by the medical helicopter to the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane. Unbeknown to the doctors, I had multiple skull fractures. These could not be seen on the x-rays because of air running around in my brain. This resulted in the main cerebral artery being pinched off to the frontal part of my brain (This is the executive section of the brain).

On 8th Dec as a consequence of this clipping off of the blood vessel, I had a big bleed on the brain and I had to have an urgent brain operation. Because of the bleed, I completely lost my ability to walk, talk and eat solid food. I had severe ABI (Acquired Brain Injury).

.... Ken in a comatose state
December 1995 .....

After coming out of Intensive Care Unit (ICU), I was placed in the Critical Care Section of M7, the ward for brain injured people. While I was in Ward M7, the doctors believed I had damaged my thirst mechanism. I apparently did not know when to stop drinking. The doctors called this disease, Polydipsia. It was as if I had been in the Sahara Desert for two weeks with insufficient to drink. I had such an insatiable thirst that I dreamed of drinking all the water from the end of a running garden hose. I believed at the time the nurses were just being difficult when they forcibly limited my water intake to three litres of water a day.

I have since found out from a nursing relative that in such a case as mine, it has been reported that if you drink too much water, your kidneys can fail from water overload. The doctors had to ascertain whether my problem was physical or psychological so everything I drank was recorded on a chart at the foot of my bed. How to get a 230ml -hospital cup of water became the whole goal of my day. When the nurses came on ward rounds with torches at about four in the morning, I would be awake for the morning round, I would be awake for that welcome light. `Could I have some water, please?’ If I was within the three litres per day, which I was allowed to drink, I could have some.

Polydipsia was such an acute problem that I felt on the edge of insanity. In M7, I desperately wanted the doctors to change their minds on the quantity of water I could have. In protest I began throwing anything from cutlery to boxes of tissues out the window. Fortunately, there was a metre wide shelf outside the window, which prevented things from hurtling down from the 7th floor to the pavement below.

Eventually in Feb 1996, I was transferred to the Head Injuries Unit (HIU for short) in the same hospital. I still had this major thirst problem. I was so discouraged with this problem of how to get enough water to drink; I almost quit on rehabilitation. It was here that I had a very funny experience. They still had me on water restrictions. I guess they were trying to get to the bottom of the problem. Read about my funny experience at the Rose Water Blog Site.

In HIU, therapists taught me to walk again and talk properly. My speech was very slurred and slow from what was called dysarthria, which comes from the muscles in your throat being affected. The therapists helped get my scrambled head back together again. In April 1996, I was just beginning to walk again instead of using a wheelchair. I also had to learn to write again. In March 1996, my level of comprehension was such that my speech pathologist had me doing simple definitions of words. My writing was so bad, she had me begin to type them on the computer so she could read it.

From there she had me begin to write a speech in preparation for my homecoming party when I came out of hospital in May. About 100 ++ people had come to see me in hospital over six months. From having to learn to write again I progressed: It began as ‘symbolic pictograms’ (almost childlike drawings), in M7, to very scratchy writing in HIU, to readable hand writing and to the use of my computer all over again when I got out of hospital.

Eventually I was able to leave hospital. I had been in hospital six long months. The day I was able to leave HIU was a day of intense elation. As Harriet, my wife, drove me down the driveway of HIU, I well remember the sense of accomplishment. I had made it! I had been in hospital for six long months from 4th December 1995 to 24th May 1996.

Before my accident, another significant incident occurred. Through my business connections, I had held an insurance Income Protection Policy for several years. One night in July 1995, (four months before my accident I didn’t know I was going to have), a man phoned me out of the Yellow Pages and said he wanted to talk to me about an Income and Protection Policy he was promoting.

I said, ‘I’ve already got one of those. I don’t need to talk to you’. We talked about rates and benefits for a while. They were far better than the policy I had. As a result, I went ahead with a different but small company at the time. If it had been my wife, she would have said ‘No’ but fortunately it was me. This policy was for life and was CPI indexed. Four months later, I had my accident.

In many ways this accident and its consequences, has been the best thing that has happened to myself and the family and even though it has been a difficult experience. I have now been provided with an income much better than a Government Pension. I think there is irony and humour in this. I had worked hard all my life for very little, whereas now I don’t have to work at all if I don’t want to. It is quite adequate for our needs where I can still work through our company (if I have time for it) and Harriet can work as well. We own our house well, so we do not have mortgage payments to make every month.

As I have a ‘Christian Spirituality’, God supplied freely and worked things out for good for us long before I could it all think it out. As I am on a permanently paid holiday through my life-long Income Protection, I have time to spend with people in a way I never could do in my busy business.

Through this ‘Christian Spirituality’, there has been an ongoing connection with a Personal Higher Power (God), and has brought healing, restoration and transformation of life purpose.

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Home After Six Months in Hospital .....

In 1981, we built a unique natural house out of recycled timber for a fraction of the price of a new house. People often come out to see this house. I had run an environmental landscape design and construction business for twenty years so I had the skills to put things together like this. This is on our five acres of light open eucalypt bush at Chambers Flat, Brisbane.

The house is largely of glass set into a post and lintel construction of 100 ++ year old broadaxed timbers and sandstone walls. The total concept of indoor-outdoor flow, has a nice ambience to it and the design is unique and lends itself well to future development. See Blog Site on the house. The house is called ‘Ken & Harriet House’ … it is a great place to live as I largely look after the large garden and acreage. We have a real sense of close community, starting with the family and spreading to many others.

Photograph 1: Ken and Harriet his wife after seven months after the accident at their house at Chambers Flat.

Photograph 2: Ken giving a speech in our amphitheatre for my homecoming party in July when I was out of hospital in May. About 100 people came and saw me in hospital over a six months period .…. They came one night to celebrate my home

coming.__________________________________
March 2003: Ken …. eight years after the accident

With having no mortgage, we are free to move around the world. See our travel blog site at: http://travelblogkenandharriet.blogspot.com/.... the some of the places we have been to over the last few years.

Photographs from March 2003 at Bath in England ….. when Harriet, my wife and I went on a four week holiday. See website http://www.romanbaths.co.uk/ ….. we had an amazing time for a whole day in the ancient city of Bath …The Baths are from the first and second Century from Imperial Rome.

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Lack of Driving: Because I cannot drive at the moment due to my accident ….. now thirteen years ago, I have learnt to drive on the Internet …. I can go around the world and be back in my office in few minutes, all for $25.00 / month and see hundreds of people along the way through e-mailing. Since March 2001, I have started the following e-mail broadcasts which go to over 1000 ++ people around the world:

Brain Injury Survivor Network (BISN) …. Blog site

• Brain Injury Survivor Network (BISN) for Brain Injury People: I help facilitate the Brain Injury Survivor Network and an international Blog Site at: See: http://braininjurysurvivornetwork.blogspot.com/

Several years ago the president of the Singapore Brain Injury Association e-mailed me to be on my e-mail broadcasts. In a similar way, a researcher at a main London hospital also e-mailed me to be on my e-mail broadcasts as they were setting up a global Brain Injury contacts network. It now goes all the world with many hundreds of people a month looking at my website around the world.

The statistics for brain injury in Queensland alone out of seven states in Australia are that there are apparently 11,000 people a year in this state who finish up with a brain injury from various causes. Of those who survive, 4000 of these people will be permanently disabled in some way with reduced brain function capabilities.

Less than two hundred of these can expect to receive the quality of care and further rehabilitation they need and let alone deserve. Any support to brain injury people is a valuable one.

• Ken and Harriet’s Place: http://kenandharrietsplace.blogspot.com/ I receive a lot of e-mails from others that are meant to make you smile. I forward these on to others who would appreciate them.
• Travel details: Harriet spend a bit of time travelling overseas now. I send out periodic travel news to family and friends around the world. I detail this at http://travelblogkenandharriet.blogspot.com/ I have about 250 free blogs which I can hyperlink at will ..... blogs are your own personal mini-websites where you can upload as many photos as you like and add words if you wish as in our trip in Italy in 2005 when we visited Cinque Terre ....

• see: http://cinqueterre1.blogspot.com/ or Niagara Falls as in 2008 when we visited Canada.
• See http://niagarafallsmay2008.blogspot.com/

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In conclusion, my life changed overnight when I had a simple accident which resulted in severe consequences. I went through a real transformation of life whereby I went from being an Physical Gardener, concerned about outer sustainability to one of being an Inner. Life Gardener concerned about Inner Sustainability.

In an ongoing personal sense …. Can your life be maintained to? ….. is what you doing now preparing the way ahead for new life? I have also discovered the significance of the Inner and Outer Life. Sustainability I have come to see, has to be a wholistic view on life of Inner, Middle and Outer Persons. Problems come because things do not change from the Outside to Inside but from the Inside to the Outside.

I have come to greatly value people, no matter who they are, what they say or do. This because I have a Christian Spirituality ….. all people are of the Earth but made in the Image of God. When Earth and Spirit came together, people became living beings or living souls …… of mind, will and emotions. I talk in detail about this more fully at this Blog Site.
I just love getting together with other people.

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Ken Aitken The Recycled Man