Stories & Achievements: Sean’s Story

Sean’s story: determination personified

“I grew up in Mayfield and moved around a bit. I live in Maitland now. I’m pretty open about my drug past - even my kids know that their parents have been to rehab. Since then the only drugs I’ve had are the anti seizure medications that I take.

The date of my injury was 23 June 2019. I don’t remember the accident, but apparently I was under the influence of alcohol. They tell me I took off in the car of this girl I was seeing while she was in the service station, no seatbelt or anything. I didn’t get too far and mounted an Energy Australia power pole.

From John Hunter they switched me over to the Rankin Park Hospital nearby. I thought I’d overdosed but I was told ‘No, Sean you’re not in rehab, you’re in hospital. You’ve crashed a car.’  So I did a lot of memory related exercises and tests, like getting little foam blocks and putting them around the room in different locations. For example, next to a chair on the physio’s bench and then taking them away and then putting the five or six boxes in front of me and seeing if I can remember to put them back in place.

After a few months I moved into Hunter Brain Injury Service on Darby Street for five or six months.  It was really good not being stuck in hospital and everybody at HBIS has an acquired brain injury so I’d be sitting in the lounge room with people who have gone through similar things. We had group activities and took turns cooking dinner for the other residents.   The thing I was most excited about was getting to see my two boys (12 and 13) on weekends.  I could take them out to the movies or Timezone which was definitely a positive.

After my injury the big change for me was not hanging around the groups of people that I spent time with before.  They were all drug users and even though we’d call each other ‘mates’ it was really just a drink and drug circle of friends.  I didn’t want to touch the stuff anymore.  Real relationship or closeness wasn’t really there in the first place. It’s different now. I couple of my mates have also pulled their heads in lately and it usually starts to happen when we become parents.

One thing that hit me was a day when my kids visited and my youngest said “Dad, you’re getting pretty big, big fella!”

I’d packed on 30 kilos because I wasn’t on ice anymore and was actually eating.  A big goal became losing weight. The dietitians at HBIS put me on the scales and it shocked me when they said ‘Sean, you’re up to 116 kilos.’  I was lazy, watched a lot of TV and not walking much. So I started to change the way I lived.

HBIS have group community events where around ten participants would go for lunch or to the pool or out to things like Surfest. My case worker asked me one day if I’d like a support worker.  So I met Chris from Headstart and we went on walks around the park or we went to the pool for laps and then we’d get lunch. It was good to have some group community involvement but also good to go and do something different ourselves at times.

Lifetime Care paid for my membership at Anytime Fitness gym and my two support workers would take me to the gym as HBIS had made up a program for me. I realised that doing 20 minutes on the treadmill or exercise bike with my speed set to 4.5k’s an hour, and then doing a little weight based stuff isn’t really enough to drop the kilos. So I set it to 8k’s an hour for 8km’s so I was jogging and doing it for half an hour instead of 20 mins.

After a couple of months we doubled everything. I’m not a muscle man or anything but doing lateral pulldowns with 10 kilos, I didn’t even feel like there was any weight attached. So I doubled the amount to 20 reps of 20 kilos instead of 10 reps of 10 kilos. I did four rounds around the gym instead of two or three to burn more calories.

I’d go to have a follow up meeting at HBIS with Dr. Keller - the same doctor that was supporting me when I was at John Hunter. He said ‘you look a lot better!’ I asked if we’d met and he responded ‘Yes Sean, I was your doctor in hospital.’  I said ‘well I don’t remember being there.’

Even after being at the gym and going for walks I’d only lost 5 kilos in 3 or 4 months.  I told Dr Keller that I was up to 10,000 steps a day, and he said ‘Sean, 10,000 is good but if you want to lose more weight you’ve got to do 15,000.’

So I upped it a little bit more and started running. I had an exercise physiologist meet me at the gym for our one hour meetings and she introduced me to high intensity cardio.  Now I do three or four routines that are relatively simple exercises but fast paced for a minute then you go to the next exercise and you do five exercises. You wait two minutes and then you do it again, three times. That seems to be the thing that shifted the weight because I only do the weight machines once a week now and the high intensity cardio twice weekly. These days I often do 25,000 steps a day.

I was 116 kg’s and now I’m down to 86 kilos. I still want to go a little bit more, but I’m pretty sure it’ll now be more of a longer drawn out thing.

I’ve based a lot on my children. My boys are both into junior rugby league and my other son said to me, ‘Dad, I’m not going to be able to call you big fella anymore!’

I was a really unhealthy, overweight kid and never did much sport at school. Fast forward 10 or 15 years and I had no weight on me because I was abusing amphetamines. There was no strength and I wasn’t healthy.

My boys are still faster than me but I can actually keep up with them and do passing drills or shoot hoops at the basketball court or go for a run whereas before I could barely go 200 meters and I’d have to stop.

One other thing I‘ve changed is the garbage food. I don’t drink Coke or have sugar in my coffee anymore and I stay away from fast food. Earlier in my recovery I’d do 6000 steps with my support worker and then go to Hungry Jacks for lunch.  That’s pretty stupid because any calories that you burn off are going to come straight back when you have a medium meal. Now I try to eat properly and work out as much as I can.

Brad, my Headstart support worker, helped me focus on the exercise physiologist’s workout regimes. Brad downloaded an app called Tabata which really helps with the timing of the five exercises.  The app counts down the 60 seconds and then gives you a 20 second break to move from the rowing machine to the dumb bells. I take a short rest and begin again.  Brad was showing me the phone and telling me what exercises I had to do.  After doing it a couple of times he’s really just an observer making sure I’m doing it right and keeping my back straight or whatever.

Currently we’re aiming so that I don’t need a support worker to tell me what to do. I’ve got the Tabata app on my phone so I can know the exercises I need to do, line them all up and do it by myself.

Over the coming three or four months my goal is to reduce my support slowly until I don’t need it anymore.  Lynette, my Headstart Co-Worker was telling me that every support workers job is to really do themselves out of a job. I can already do a couple of the routines on my own, and pretty soon I’ll be capable of doing it all independently.

Not only does Brad encourage me - which is good and something I think he’s supposed to do anyway - but he watches me exercising and helps with little technique-based things like ‘You gotta keep your back straight there’ or ‘You’re leaning too far forward’.  Advice and little hints like that help you move forward.

Then when I meet up with my exercise physiologist every month or two they are blown away by how far down I can do squats.  They’ve said to me ‘Before you were only just bending your knees, bobbing up and down a little bit.  But now you’re going down as far as I think is possible!’  I say ‘that’d be my drill sergeant Brad sitting on side just saying keep your back straight, go down lower and giving me those pointers!’

Every day now I’ll do at least 15,000 steps daily. I either walk around the suburbs or I’ve got a treadmill in the back room.  Sometimes I just walk to one end of the house, chuck a u-ey and come all the way back.

I was working a little before the accident as a delivery driver and then afterwards I had a job for my Aunty’s company doing bookkeeping. It was mainly online stuff such as using Xero for a bunch of her clients. I’ve always been into computers but I didn’t get a lot of training for that.

Since my accident I’ve actually done two TAFE courses - certificate II and certificate III in Business Administration. I wanted to actually have something to put on my resume that’s better than just ‘five or six months working for Newcastle Business Support using Xero.’

My TAFE courses covered a wide variety of things.  Everything from WHS and workplace safety to how to run a business and how to treat customers and staff.
It was pretty easy to do the two courses even though it was during the COVID dilemmas. Only one day a week I actually had to goto the campus while the other two or three days I was using Microsoft Teams or a video chat.

I asked my TAFE teacher, Melissa, whether I should come back and do a Cert 4 and she said ‘You’re work ready already. You’re typing faster than anyone in the class, you’re helping other people in the class. You’d get another notch on your belt but there’s not much more you need for an office administrator or receptionist job all you really need is a Cert 3.’  Melissa also said to put her down as a contact person on my resume when applying for jobs.

I’ve got my drivers license back now so I can also put that on my resume. I don’t own a vehicle yet but I can always borrow my mother’s car to get to work.  She wouldn’t mind, but really I need my own car soon.

I’ve saved up some money and so I look on Facebook Marketplace, but online is not the safest way to buy a used vehicle with over 300,000k’s and no warranty. So I really need to visit a car yard with my mum and go to OzCar or somewhere like that to find something in my price range.”

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