About five years ago my dad fell off a ladder and sustained injuries to his head and his back, and he hasn’t completely recovered.
We had a leaking roof, so he walked outside to see if he could fix it. He just wasn’t careful, he had placed two ladders on top of each other and without thinking he decided to climb onto the ladders.
He basically just fell from a small height – about a metre high – and he fell backwards, hit his head on the grass and he was unconscious.
I realised when he was in ICU and he was in an induced coma: it was pretty bad.
He sustained a fracture in his back, he sustained bleeding to the brain, he sustained a pulmonary embolism, he sustained spinal stenosis, and he sustained fibrosis in the lungs.
He was in hospital for about five or six months.
My mum’s the primary caregiver and she’s basically taken over all duties. She looks after him and looks after the house at the same time.
[Translated] It didn’t just affect me, it affected my whole family.
He’s not the same person as he used to be. He’s constantly worrying about whether he’s going to get better, and the longer it takes, the more depressed he gets.
My dad was very active: he would mow the lawns, he would do house maintenance, he was a very hands-on European migrant – you know: ‘do everything yourself’ type of person.
And he thought that nothing would ever happen to him, or that it could have possibly happened the way it turned out – so it could potentially happen to anyone.
If you fall from a ladder it’s not just you that suffers, there can be massive consequences for your family and those who care for you.