The participant was a sixty-three-year-old man living in Geelong with his wife of more than forty years.

He had spent thirty-five years working at one of Geelong’s big manufacturing plants, and retirement had suited him perfectly. His weeks ran to a rhythm the whole street could set a watch by: fishing on the bay, footy with his mates at the local club, and long afternoons in his shed, where half the neighbourhood brought things that needed fixing.

He was the capable one. The helper. The bloke you called.

Then, at sixty-two, while cleaning the gutters, he fell from a ladder.

He survived, and after weeks in hospital and rehabilitation, he walked back through his own front door looking, to everyone’s relief, almost like himself.

But an acquired brain injury had come home with him.

His memory had gaps now. He repeated questions, lost the thread of jobs halfway through, and forgot names he had known for decades. A crushing fatigue drained him by early afternoon. And hardest of all, his easygoing nature had changed. The patient man his wife had married could now snap over nothing, then sit in silent shame about it for hours.

His driver’s licence was suspended after the injury. For a man who had driven himself everywhere for forty-five years, handing over the keys hurt almost as much as the fall.