Now, this point of the story gets a bit easier for me – not, like, emotionally or anything, just because I can actually remember this stuff.

Like my sister said in her diary, I didn’t get a “Hollywood” moment. Which is a shame, because that would’ve been cool. Apparently I once said to a friend that it’d be interesting to have amnesia. (And now check it out! I do!) But while I don’t have a particular moment where my memories start again, my earliest recollection is being in rehab.

In my second room, I’ve since found out. My first room was locked deep in the acquired brain injury ward, and I was in a “Craig bed”. That’s what they called the padded cells that masquerade as beds. It’s a cage with a hinged door, and gymnasium-like padding all over the walls of the cage. I had no access to leave myself, so had to call out whenever I wanted to use the bathroom. I think – like I said, I have no memory.

But the most amazing thing for me is that I never had to ask what I was doing there. Guess I got a pretty good explanation when I was coming out of my coma. I always knew I was hit by a car, and I was at Epworth Richmond. And that I wanted a cigarette.

Despite all of the suggestive programming that my family tried. I asked for a ciggie earlier, and they said, “But Josh – you don’t smoke.” I won though, when my best mate Michael could start visiting me and I had a regular packet coming in every day.

I did a lot of TV watching around this time. That was when Brit Lapthorne had just gone missing overseas and they were trying to find her. See, my memory can’t be that bad if I can remember that.

My memory was a risk though – one of the symptoms of post-traumatic amnesia is lack of short term memory. My neuro-psychologist would come past the room each day with three flash cards, and then come back the next day and ask me what the cards were yesterday.

I had a little trouble at the start. She’d ask the standard questions like what date is it, where are you, and “How old are you?” And I shot back, “28.” Easy, right? Except I’m 27. I had to actually do the math and go, OK – I was born in 1981 so… well there ya go. I suspect the fact that I had a birthday only a couple of months earlier was a contributing factor. But it was only one birthday, not two – so who knows.

Apparently there was a bit of a discussion about the flash cards with my family. See, I figured the best way to remember was to remember the initials of the pictures – pretty clever, eh? Brain injury my ass! And one lot I had a fork, a plate and a bird – which I told the nuero-psych that I’d call a pterodactyl (because ‘P’ worked better with the initials system I’d worked out).  The nuero-psych told my family not to encourage me to do that, because ‘it reinforces bad learning’. Pterodactyl, c’mon! That’s fucking intelligent.

Unlike some of my buddies in the acquired brain injury ward. Even before the accident, that seemed like a misnomer – like, here’s a brain injury I “acquired”. That other one? I got it for Christmas.

I was down the hall from a moaner – must’ve been in an accident that really fucked his head up. I could hear the nurses come around, to give him a shower probably, and he would moan away the whole time like a retard. Which is probably not a cool thing to say, because it’s quite possible he was one… now.