On October 31 2008 – Halloween, and round about a month and 20 days since I was hit by the car, I was “finally” deemed well enough to be released on an unsuspecting public. I put finally in quotation marks because thinking back, I can’t really recall hanging to get out of the joint. I obviously wanted to, so was pretty pumped the day came.

It was preceded by a ‘weekend stay’, as they call it, the weekend prior. Saturday morning my Mum picked me up, took me down to the parent’s house in suburban Seaford. I saw a few mates, watched TV, and was dropped off back at rehab Sunday night.

The purpose of the weekend stay is, pretty obviously, to suss out if any newly-acquired injuries would affect ordinary day-to-day life. This wasn’t so much the case with me, as mentioned I was moving to my own apartment in Elwood from a share house in St Kilda when the accident happened – so finding myself living back with the ‘rents again at 27 was most certainly not ‘ordinary day-to-day life’.

I’ve lived here before, obviously – just before the place in St Kilda East, actually. When I moved out, the parents must’ve gotten the inkling that it was for realsies that time, as after I moved all of my furniture out with me (and it was literally everything upstairs, my domain), they went ahead and bought their own furniture: like a bed, a couch, a bookshelf… you get the idea. And bless their determined cotton socks, now refuse to move any of it, so my stuff is in storage while I’m living on top of the crap wares purchased for weekend visitors.

Anyways, there wasn’t any problems, so I was shuttled outta rehab and into parenthab. To signify the event, and to warn of any forthcoming doom, the rehab centre holds a ‘family meeting’, where they discuss any problems that might arise and how I did in rehab. Like school, I suppose, but I didn’t get a report card – just some notes, that I’ll faithfully produce and desecrate below.

Physio

You’ve been very compliant with everything you’ve been asked to do in physio and as such you’ve made good improvements.

I honestly had no idea I was allowed to be anything but compliant. I wish they’d told me that before I subjected myself to countless kilometres on an exercise bike and spent hours balancing on half an exercise ball.

Neuropsychology

Given information received from the accident scene and the lengthy period of post-traumatic amnesia, we would expect some changes in your thinking skills post-injury. Josh, you reported few changes. (Mum) has reported to some repetition in conversation and not recalling conversations as reliably. No changes in behaviour have been noted.

I have no come back here or anything to be a smart arse about – I was one repetitive little mofo. If the re-enactments of the people who copped it are anything to go by, I would deliver a sentence again, later, with the same enthusiasm as the original time I said it. Which was probably not more than a few minutes before, but what can I say: was fucked up.

Josh, you have coped remarkably well with your injury and being in hospital.

Again, no come back – just wanted to reiterate that no one thinks I’m retarded. Well, no medical professional. Go me.

Speech therapy

My role your speech therapist has been to assess your communication skills following your brain injury. At a day-to-day level, you have demonstrated the ability to independently meet all your communication needs. Your written expression skills were considered functional for day-to-day tasks.

The written skills were a bit of a concern for me, coz of the whole ‘like to pitch myself as a writer’ thing. But hey, this is part ten of an epic blog post that’s got about 7,000 words now, so I’m hoping that means I’m OK. Otherwise you have totally just read an unmitigated load of crap.