MY NEW BRAIN
Channel 4 · TV Week · 23 Aug 2010 · by: Channel 4
Each year in Britain, 135,000 people end up in hospital with a traumatic brain injury. Most at risk are young men and the effects, though often hidden, can be profound and life-changing for the people affected, as well as their families and friends.
In this powerful and moving documentary for Cutting Edge, acclaimed filmmaker Zac Beattie follows 20-year-old Simon Hales on a remarkable journey through rehab as he and his family struggle to come to terms with the challenges and limitations of his new life after brain injury.
A popular undergraduate at Newcastle University, Simon was on a night out when he and a friend tried to climb back into a nightclub they'd been thrown out of mistakenly. In the dark Simon fell twenty feet and landed on his head, suffering a severe brain injury.
Lucky to survive, it took Simon five weeks to wake from his coma.
Simon may look more or less "fixed" on the outside - he is walking and talking relatively normally - but on the inside he is battling with a new and less compliant brain. And his family want to know when they will get the 'old' Simon back. But nobody can say - with brain injury, the doctors just don't know.
The film follows the progress and the struggles Simon and his family's experience as he is treated in a brain injury rehabilitation unit and begins his first visits home.
In some ways he's as charming and lovable as ever, but he's not the same 'Simon'. He needs constant attention. He remembers nothing of the weeks and months before his accident, let alone the fall itself. And his ability to make new memories is not working properly.
His behaviour can seem childish and odd - he can swing from silliness to anger in a flash.
Simon says rehab is like a prison. He repeats himself and becomes fixated on things. He keeps joking, over and over, about killing the family dog. His mum Jane says it's like having a toddler all over again, but in the body of a 20-year-old.
Simon makes a strong recovery, but this brings its own problems; something that's all too familiar to those working with brain injury: the more his brain recovers and the more he understands what's happened to him - and what he has lost - the more frustrated and upset Simon becomes.
He can't control his temper like he used to and he takes his frustration out on his mum. She just wants her son back.
Simon's mum is honest about her own frustration, but she's determined not to give in. In the hope that it will help, rather than hinder, Simon's progress she decides to take him back to Newcastle to put back together the lost memories - to see the friends he has left behind, to visit the hospital that kept him alive and above all to go to the scene of the accident. But what reactions will it trigger in Simon? How will he cope being confronted by the moment that changed his life.
And as Simon's 21st birthday party approaches his family won't stop willing him to get better. He's continuing to make progress all the time and his old personality is starting to re-emerge, he seems more 'switched on' and aware and he's even planning to make a speech!
Months after the accident, he's still not the 'old' Simon and the challenges of the brain injury will almost certainly effect him for the rest of his life.
But as he comes of age, can Simon and his family come to terms with what has happened and learn to love the new 'Simon'?
