Hello I’m Lindsay Jeffrey, I’m from Townsville in Queensland. I’m 55. I was a commercial cleaner all my life until I woke up one morning and found that I couldn’t move.
Hello I’m Lindsay Jeffrey, I’m from Townsville in Queensland. I’m 55. I was a commercial cleaner all my life until I woke up one morning and found that I couldn’t move.
Lindsay had his stroke on the first of May last year. It was pretty devastating. I heard him fall and went into the bedroom and he couldn’t get back into bed. Not knowing what to do with him they wanted to put him in a home. And that meant, an aged care facility. And we just said no, we’re taking him out. That was the best thing we ever did.
We got a very good lady at NDIS, very supportive. One of the things that they said at NDIS, you’re aged parents. Which we are. We’re still fairly active, really, but for how long? We don’t know. Nobody knows. So we had to put things in place that were going to benefit Lindsay.
Well I got Ronald through SOLAS. Takes me here and there and helps me with shopping occasionally. Go in and visit all the geek shops.
He just took to Ronald like a duck to water. They’re good buddies.
The work I’ve been doing with Lindsay is giving him that mental support. Having a nice chat with him and to bring back those experiences that he missed out on. You know, go down to The Strand. He hasn’t been to the beach in a very long time. Yeah, he took this little remote control car and he just had a ball. It was just an amazing feeling, just amazing feeling.
He’s a completely different person. He’s just so enthused to go out and try and do things for himself.
I’d like to see him be able to be a little bit more independent. Because there are a lot of his age group who have strokes, or even younger. And they’ve still got a life to lead. They’ve got to have some independence.
That’s the worst problem with being disabled is, you tend to sit there and think the worst of things. You don’t think that you can do anything. I didn’t realise just what could be done. Stick with it. You might think nothing’s going to happen, but it does eventually happen. You’ve just got to be prepared to wait.
