Even though I was “free” and back at home, I hadn’t quite finished rehab yet. I still had to complete outpatient rehab.

Cue another play on words using Amy Winehouse’s Rehab.

Unfortunately, for blogging’s sake, I wasn’t given any notes that I could make fun of. I came close to not having anything to make fun of – I was discharged from my main rehab on October 31, and they apparently had to “squeeze” me in at outpatient rehab to see the treating doctor before they began breaking for Christmas. They did, though, and started me on an ‘intensive’ two day a week program sometime in late November.

This is in stark contrast to my program at inpatient rehab, where I had a pretty full day. Well, once I was promoted from PTA stage at least. My most hardcore day was Wednesday, which kicked off with speech, then occupational therapy, then physio, and then psychology. Most days I had at least two sessions, which were an hour long. It sounds like I’m bitching about nothing, but all I wanted to do was lie in bed and watch Ellen and The View and rehabilitating totally interrupted that. Not because I was finding that I was overtly tired after the accident or anything – fact is, I’m just a lazy bugger.

They must have done a bang up job at rehab though, because by the time I got to outpatient rehab, all my counselors – besides my physiotherapist – discharged me after the first session.

Occupational therapy said hi, sat me down and asked me some logic questions, then gave me instructions to make a coat hanger, which I then dutifully made. This will come in handy in my dream coat hanger creation career if I ever pull my finger out and do something about it. I probably should, because as soon as the hanging loop was done at the top of the fucker, she said, “OK, great job! You’re fine.”

I had two sessions with the speech therapist. I was slurring my speech a bit, and sometimes tripped over words – not because I couldn’t find the word (I knew exactly what I wanted to say) but I just couldn’t sound it out as fluidly as I used to. She told me to slow down, then she said, “I won’t discharge you because it’s a hassle to reinstate you, but if you have any problems, come see me.”

Physio was more exercise bike and standing on half fit balls to build up my balance. (It wasn’t just because my ankle was fractured – brain injuries can often affect balance. I was dodgy even on my “good” ankle.) The goal of physio was to get me back to gym – after maybe three sessions, she started asking me which gym I wanted to go to.

The session I was most looking forward to was the driving assessment – I wasn’t allowed to drive again until a therapist went on the road with me and saw that my driving wasn’t affected.

So, one morning we did just that – me and a fully-fledged driving instructor in a dual control car, with the therapist sitting in the back seat. It wasn’t like a driving assessment for your licence – it was much more lax than that. If it was, I would’ve been asked to stop driving so they could drive back – I fucked up heaps. I sped to get an amber light, I didn’t realise a car was indicating right because they were doing a U-tun on a roundabout rather than turning right, so went when they were coming my way… At the end, they asked, “Where do you think you went wrong?” I reeled off that list. They said, “Yup, and you were speeding most of the time too.”

Licence: back. I was now a fully-functional adult again. With a reinforced opinion that I was largely unscathed by the accident because, hey, check out how quickly they discharged me.