Episode 9: Motorcycles and Brains

Nicole Yeates

Bio: Nicole Yeates adjusted to a traumatic brain injury at the age of 16 after a motorcycle accident that literally killed her. Her mother believed in her capacity to heal and refused to let doctors turn off the machines. After many years of rehabilitation she is a rehabilitation counselor, accredited mediator, best selling author of Holding Onto Hope and more.

You may find her at:

Website: www.holdingontohope.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/3507196699363504

Instagram: @nicoleyeatesforbrainhealth

Podcast transcript below:

Welcome to the Relatively Damaged Podcast by Damaged Parents were crushed, distorted, splintered people come to learn, maybe. Just maybe we're all a little bit damaged. Someone once told me it's safe to assume 50% of the people I meet are struggling and feel wounded in some way. I would venture to say it's closer to 100%.

Every one of us is either currently struggling or has struggled with something that made us feel less than, like we aren't good enough. We aren't capable. We are Relatively Damaged. And that's what we're here to talk about in my ongoing investigation of the damage self, I want to better understand how others view their own challenges. Maybe it's not so much about the damage. Maybe it's about our perception and how we deal with it. There's a deep commitment to becoming who we are meant to be. How do you do that? How do you find balance after a damaging experience?

My hero is the damaged person. The one who faces seemingly insurmountable odds to come out on the other side whole. Those who stared directly into the face of adversity with unyielding persistence to discover their purpose. These are the people who inspire me to be more fully me, not in spite of my trials, but because of them. Let's hear from another hero.

Today's topic includes sensitive material, which may not be appropriate for children. This podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended as advice. The opinions expressed here are strictly those of the person who gave them. 

Today, we're going to talk with Nicole Yates. She has many roles in her life daughter, survivor of a devastating motorcycle accident that caused a traumatic brain injury. Rehabilitation counselor best-selling author. And the more we'll talk about how she died on the road. 

Her mom believed in her ability to come back from a vegetative state. How she healed and believes her purpose is to give hope to as many people as she can so they may find their purpose. Let's talk. 

Damaged Parents: [00:02:21] Welcome Nicole to the Relatively Damaged Podcast. Thank you for being here today.

Nicole Yeates: [00:02:28] Thank you for having me, Angela.

Damaged Parents: [00:02:30] You're welcome. So we're here today to talk about struggles and overcoming them. You answered an ad and you said you had a struggle to share it. My understanding is that you had a traumatic brain injury, which has left you with some significant disabilities.

Nicole Yeates: [00:02:51] yeah, well at the permanent disability, certainly. Basically when I was 16 years old, I had a motorcycle accident. It was in New Zealand and. Zealand at that time, you were able to get your license at age 15, which is crazy. But, that it's not that anymore. It's 18, but I got my first tax return at 15 and it wasn't enough to buy a car.

So I bought a motorbike and, um, yeah, it lasted about six months before having a hit and run motorcycle accident. The guy left me on the road for the dead. I died on the road, but it was resuscitated died another two times after that in hospital and my prognosis was expect death or life in the vegetative stage.

Damaged Parents: [00:03:41] Wow. I bet your family and friends were terrified.

Nicole Yeates: [00:03:45] Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yep. Especially my mother. It's sad. Just mum and I, um, basically my father died when I was quite young, so basically. Mum and I were it. so that was obviously very traumatic for her.  I remained in a coma for another three weeks and you know, it was touching, go for a lot of that.  and when I woke up, I couldn't walk, talk.

My body was so damaged. My brain was so damaged that it couldn't even regulate its own temperature. I had no awareness of bladder control. Basically really truly had to start from ground zero to relearn everything.

Damaged Parents: [00:04:30] So you couldn't walk, you couldn't talk, you couldn't control your bladder and what was the awareness like, though, in, when you woke up? What? Yeah. What was that like? Yeah.

Nicole Yeates: [00:04:45] Yeah, I wish I could answer that with clarity, Angela, but I have a measure around, about the year or two before the accident in the year or two after the accident, uh, pretty hazy. I have complete blanks, like apparently a year after the accident, I went to see a dire straits concert and had a marvelous time. have no memory of it.

Damaged Parents: [00:05:06] Okay. Okay. So was there a point, was there some point where you've realized that you didn't know that you didn't know in now you were starting to remember.

Nicole Yeates: [00:05:17] Look, I remembered people like, you know, I knew my mother was, you know, I knew who my friends were. Sometimes if I haven't seen someone for a long time, I might get a little mixed up. But yeah. I knew those basics. I just didn't know. I didn't know my way around. Like when I got out of hospital, um, going home for the first time I looked in my wardrobe and asked mum whose clothes they were.

I didn't know my way around the city. I grew up in,  though, I didn't know, um, from a brain injury perspective, I didn't know social cues. I had to relearn social cues.

Damaged Parents: [00:05:52] social cues. Like what?

Nicole Yeates: [00:05:54] Well, you know, when you're talking to someone and they zone out, cause they're totally not interested in what you're saying.

I would not understand those sorts of social cues. My frontal lobe damage was mint. My filter had made removed, so I just said whatever came into my head, which could be embarrassing or rude. And I would have no idea that it was like that.

Damaged Parents: [00:06:17] Oh, okay. So kind of like the autistic person, where they, okay. Yeah, I'm trying. I just want to understand.

Nicole Yeates: [00:06:28] Like a, three-year-old basically, a three has no idea about those sorts of intricacies of communication. And, so really, I mean, it was going back to a toddler, I had to learn to be toilet trained again. I had to, basically start from about there.

Damaged Parents: [00:06:47] now was that.  I'm trying to, I want to dial into the feelings and what I'm trying to get at it. And it's a point blank question I guess, is, was that, did you even feel, did you feel embarrassed? Did you have enough awareness to feel embarrassed or do you see where I'm going?

Nicole Yeates: [00:07:03] Yeah. Yeah, no, I didn't. And I relied heavily on feedback. So, mum, especially she would afterwards go oh Nicole, really?

Damaged Parents: [00:07:18] okay. So she would tell you if something wasn't socially acceptable and then you could make adjustments from there. And.

Nicole Yeates: [00:07:27] that's it. Yeah. And then when I went and back to school, because I missed, I had my accident on the 19th of June, 1987, so I missed all of the rest of that year of school.

And, um, started back in 1988. So February, 1988. So getting back into, I guess the social environment, that school is, I learned things mostly by trial and error, mostly trial,

Damaged Parents: [00:07:57] Oh, no. Do you have a story you want to share with us that you remember?

Nicole Yeates: [00:08:05] Yeah. Oh look, it would be things like, if someone. Had come to school and let's say they had a pimple on their face and they'd gone to a lot of trouble to cover that pimple up, so I look nice for school. I would be the one to point it out.

Damaged Parents: [00:08:27] And then what would happen?

Nicole Yeates: [00:08:29] And then I would see that the person was really embarrassed or, felt really uncomfortable, you know? So I guess I learnt along the way.

Damaged Parents: [00:08:39] Oh, no. So do you think that, I mean, they, most of them probably knew you had the accident and that you were coming back right?

Nicole Yeates: [00:08:50] Well, yes, yes. Look, my, my friends. Yeah. When I was in hospital, my friends were amazing. You know, they visited me, they participated in, you know, doing things like recording how I was when they visited, um, whether I was awake or asleep or, and, being a part of doing the exercises to keep my limbs going. But then when I got out of hospital and the realization of my disabilities, you know, I walked with the limb.

I couldn't, you know, I couldn't drive anymore. I didn't know my way around the city. I was a responsibility. Um, you know, gone was the free going teenager who, challenged all boundaries. I couldn't do that anymore. So that was a really hard adjustment,  that was probably the hardest part of everything for me was there was the going back to the altered reality I had to learn to adjust to these disability issues.

I couldn't remember.  Anything,  like I, my short-term memory was atrocious. The amount of times I turned up to school and forgot tampons, you know, when I had my period, I had to go to the office and ask for them. It could be embarrassing those memory issues, but also from a learning perspective, you know, I found, whereas before I was an average student, but I didn't have to try hard at all.

I never studied. I just cruise through school really. Whereas I couldn't do that anymore. And my friends didn't cope with that. Well, most of them, I should say most of them, majority of them didn't cope with that. And they distanced themselves from me. I didn't understand it at the time I was a teenager.

They were teenagers and that actually sent me into a really deep depression. I became suicidal. I began to wish I hadn't lived

Damaged Parents: [00:10:47] So you felt super alone

Nicole Yeates: [00:10:49] Yeah. Yeah. I really do.

Damaged Parents: [00:10:51] and these people that you thought you were able to going to be able to depend on, couldn't be there for you in the way that you needed them to be there for you.

Nicole Yeates: [00:11:01] yeah. Yeah. They, they did. I'm sure they didn't understand it either. Ironically, many years later, many of us have become friends again. I'm no longer that, dependent teenager.

Damaged Parents: [00:11:15] Yeah. I think being a teenager is so hard and I couldn't imagine having that happen in the midst of that, of the teenage years. When, because not only are you struggling, but all your friends are struggling around you to even figure out who they are. And now, you needed a little more support and they're still trying to figure out who they are.

So it makes sense to me that it would be really hard to not lose them because they don't even know who they are or what they stand for, what their values are. Does that, is that kind of.

Nicole Yeates: [00:11:51] Absolutely. And I changed too. I've gone from a shy kind of, you know, I was the sort of teenager that if I went to a party, I'd only stick with the group of friends. I knew because I wasn't confident enough to sort of go beyond that. I saw, I went from that sort of person through to a person with no filter that was really loud and, inappropriate and, yeah, so.

It was, it was a difficult time for as all.

Damaged Parents: [00:12:18] Yeah, it sounds like it. So  now you're a rehabilitation counselor and a bestselling author. So traveling from having the traumatic brain injury to that, that sounds like a pretty amazing journey. And how did you do that?

Nicole Yeates: [00:12:40] I, okay. Well, there's  lots of variants to that answer, Angela.  I had a great, support team and my mother, she never stopped believing in me, even when the doctors recommended turning life support off. Because I was going to be in a vegetative state if I lived, her response was you don't know my daughter.   So yeah, she was the biggest support that I had, but I also had a great, allied health team. So when my mother found my suicidal poetry, she went to the GP, they sent me to a psychologist and he. Literally saved my life.

Damaged Parents: [00:13:18] how so?   When someone is in that place of suicide or wanting, or even suicidal ideation, right. And you went to this, to the psychology, you said psychologist, right?

Nicole Yeates: [00:13:29] psychologist.

Damaged Parents: [00:13:30] Yeah. And how. Did he, and you attribute that to him saving, helping save your life.

How did that work? I mean, did he help you think? What about that helped you?

Nicole Yeates: [00:13:42] okay. Now that it's my book holding onto hope. That's literally what Richard Wheeler did. He gave me hope. So. I was hearing amongst all of the adjustment, disability rejection from friends, you know, learning everything all over again. There was also the sense of helplessness and the feedback from doctors.

You can't, you won't, you'll never all these negatives. Uh, all of those factors collided and I was also on epilepsy medication, because I developed epilepsy from the accident.

Damaged Parents: [00:14:26] Okay.

 Nicole Yeates: [00:14:26] basically when I went to Richard. He was using quite progressive techniques at the time, which are well utilized now.

Things like meditation and visualization. So I would visualize my brain as a bunch of spaghetti or string or worms or whatever was the flavor of the day. For me, imagine them in this mangled mess and put them together. Put it together in an order, orderly fashion. Um, and that was my visualization sort of technique, which I would do at home as well to try and heal my brain.

He gave me tools that I could use that were easy to use. I wanted to be a psychologist before my accident and, you know, I still had. That desire because when the doctor said you can't, you want it, she'll never, that was the may like a red flag to a bull. I'm going to prove you wrong. I ain't believing  none of that.

Damaged Parents: [00:15:27] is actually really surprising because a lot of people, when they become disabled, I mean, there's that sheer devastation and depression. And like you were saying that help hopelessness. So it's interesting that for you like that, no, that, no, you can't do this to is like wanna bet.

Nicole Yeates: [00:15:47] Yeah, it was a passionate driver years, Angela for years. And I hadn't actually realized how much of a, how much I'd been holding on to that. And I guess the anger about those sorts of diagnoses that I held onto for a lot of years. Um, and you know, it was the driver, which was great, but, I actually sent the neurosurgeon who gave some of those negative prognosis, a copy of my Trent university transcript and, um, Yeah, it was just, and it was a nice letter saying, yeah, thank you for saving my life and thank you, you know, for your care of me.

But you know, my request is that when you're making these prognosis, don't just base it on anatomy and physiology. Cause there's lots of other factors.  You know, there's your, your internal. Beliefs, your personality, your support systems. There's, there's lots of drivers that contribute to that outcome, not just anatomy and physiology.

And he did respond to that letter and nicely, you know, and when I got that letter back from him, it was like the anger left my shoulders. It was quite amazing. But going back to the psychology and, my psychologist, didn't say, no, you can't do psychology. Or you could answer. He gave me an IQ test

Damaged Parents: [00:17:11] okay.

Nicole Yeates: [00:17:13] and he said, look, you know, Nicole, it's, it's not going to be easy. It's not impossible. You have to work really hard, but you could do it. That was hope. That's why holding onto hope.

Damaged Parents: [00:17:31] Yeah, no, that makes a lot of, I mean, it's just so easy to lose hope and then. Find yourself in that hopelessness and even learned helplessness, if you will.  I think it's, it's so important to give hope.

Nicole Yeates: [00:17:48] Boom.

Damaged Parents: [00:17:50] And how is that best done? Right.

Nicole Yeates: [00:17:53] Yeah. Yeah. You know, you don't want to set people up for failure. And I get that it's a tricky balance and, you know, doctors don't have an easy job. But there is a balance and, it took me 15 years to get the confidence to go to university. But, you know, I did what I thought I could.

And, you know, that was to start off with beauty therapy. I trained as a beauty therapist when I was 20.

Damaged Parents: [00:18:20] What's a beauty therapist.

Nicole Yeates: [00:18:22] Yeah. The therapist is, you know, when you go into a salon for facials and waxing and I dunno what you call them over there, but

Damaged Parents: [00:18:31] Oh yeah. In the U S it's esthetician. So they. They do the face, wax scene. Then we have the hairstylist that cuts, you know, the, for the hair. And I'm not sure if there's anything else. I think the esthetician do the big long eyelashes now, too.

Nicole Yeates: [00:18:49] yeah. That's right. And pedicures, manicures and all of that. So, yeah, so I worked, I've trained as a beauty therapist and, you know, I had to work really hard to retain. All that information in my memory to pass the course. And, uh, in actually in going back a bit in my last year of high school, I actually did a psychology course at night school. So that was an introduction to psychology. And it's just a sort of say if I'd like it and, test the water a little bit. And I learned memory strategies in that course that I use still. and that was kind of, I guess, that course and having that knowledge, that education was about me going from all these bits of paper everywhere to remind me of things, to actually using my brain as a memory strategy.

Damaged Parents: [00:19:45] so this was in a psychology course. And then it, was it part teaching that or was it because you took that course, you were challenged to figure out how to do that.

Nicole Yeates: [00:19:57] Well, I just, I learnt, I learned about memory, you know, I learned about the difference between short-term memory and long-term memory and working memory and those sorts of things. But then, there was scientific evidence about. Yeah, how much short-term memory can actually hold in the average person and ways to actually make sure to an attempt these strategies actually, to enable the short term memory, to hold more information.

So the strategies were about that sort of thing and enabling the short-term memory to hold more information. So I basically took that learning and applied it to my real life. And, um, yeah, so use those strategies in my everyday life. And now they're just a part of my normal routine. I'm probably the most organized person you'll ever meet because that's not how it needs to be.

Then 33 years later, my short-term memory is still crap.

Damaged Parents: [00:20:51] Right. No, I totally understand that.  For me, organization is an absolute must have, and it has to be easy.

Nicole Yeates: [00:21:01] Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, now  I'm running a occupational sort of occupational health business. So I'm a rehabilitation counselor. I work in the occupational rehabilitation space. So people who've been injured at work, whether that be physical or psychological injuries. I've written a book.

So  I'm also branching out a little bit, with specializing in brain injury rehab, and yeah, so there's a lot of things, a lot of elements in that, so yeah. I can't rely on my short term memory to do everything I need to in that space. So that's why it's, you know, it's so important to have strategies around memory, and that's something that I teach in my workshops.

I do webinars online webinars.  I'm also just developed in the process of just about launching a brand new memory management tool called Retink it's an app. Retink. So that Retink is a combination of rethink and tinkering. You know, when you tinker with something, you modifying it, improving it and rethinking because after a brain injury, you do have to rethink everything.

Um,

Damaged Parents: [00:22:13] Yeah I think with any injury, if it's debilitated, you it's on any level, you have to rethink everything.

Nicole Yeates: [00:22:23] Yep. For sure. So Retink is specifically designed for people with memory issues and, it's an organizational tool, you know, for appointments and tasks has inbuilt reminders in it. So you don't even have to set reminders. It just does it, it has brain training games in there to help improve memory and visual special awareness and concentration it.

It has blogging built into it as well. So people get educated on brain health and strategies, tools, and resources, and it's a communication linking tool for the brain injured person or what I like to call the Retinker. If they're using ratings, then our Retinkers. And their support people. So if they've got an appointment that they need to go to, they can actually invite their support person, whether that be a family member, carer support worker into that appointment.

So they can both see it in their calendar.

Damaged Parents: [00:23:23] Oh, wow. That's really cool. Because like you were saying, I would think most brain injuries impact memory on some level, so, I would think it would also fit in the dementia world also.

Nicole Yeates: [00:23:35] for sure.

Damaged Parents: [00:23:36] And it sounds like there's like, that came to you because of experiences you had, and it was because you failed or you missed appointments or you did this or that.

And then it's like, gosh, I really, it sounds like you took that. Gosh, I really wish I had something that helped with this and said, okay, I'm sure you needed to enlist, help and assistance in creating it.

Nicole Yeates: [00:24:04] Oh, yes.

Damaged Parents: [00:24:06] so that other people might not have to have such, I don't know that a bumpy ride

Nicole Yeates: [00:24:15] Yeah. Yeah. I that that's my goal. I really, my goal is to help anyone reach their highest potential after injury. That really is the driver of all of this. I would love for people not to have to take 33 years to figure out some of the things that I did.

Damaged Parents: [00:24:37] Right. So if you can pass along those tools now, then everyone's better off.

Nicole Yeates: [00:24:45] Yeah. Yeah. And everyone deserves to reach their highest potential. No matter what the potential is.

Damaged Parents: [00:24:51] Right now you said you work in occupational therapy, right?

Nicole Yeates: [00:24:57] That's right? Yep. Yep. The occupational, you know, work the work area. So, the occupational industry here in Australia, basically we have an insurance, we'll have a few insurance systems that. Can cover if you have a work injury and, uh, yeah. So whether someone, you know, is a bus driver or they've been to the frontline and Afghanistan , whether it be psychological or physical, yeah, I assist those people.

My specialty is when they can't go back to the job they used to do because of their injury barriers. I helped them with vocational counseling and help them to find another pathway that is more suitable.

Damaged Parents: [00:25:35] Now what happens? I mean, I'm just interested in, in what happens over there is,  if let's say they're both, their hands are gone, are useless or, they there's. That lack of capacity there obviously so much takes our hands. What kind of thing do you do then? Or how do you help them then?

Nicole Yeates: [00:25:59] Yeah. So look, there's amazing assistive technology available now. So there's always those sorts of interventions that we can look at doing. You know, so we have an allied health team, where I actually work, you know, as far as the, I do contracting for rehabilitation counseling. And, but I worked with a team of allied health professionals.

So we have. Physios. We have occupational therapists. We have psychologists, rehabilitation, counselors, employment consultants, and we work as a team together. So we each take on our own specialized area. So if a client, is needs new employment services, because they kind of go back to their old job, then they're more likely to be referred to me. If someone has a physical injury and they've got to go back to the same job, but there might be some workplace adaptations that need to happen. Um, it's more likely to go to an occupational therapist. Yeah. So that's how we work.

Damaged Parents: [00:27:00] What have you noticed as far as like there's a huge emotional side of becoming disabled or losing capacity and. You woke up to it, if will.

Nicole Yeates: [00:27:17] Literally.

Damaged Parents: [00:27:19] And I, it happens like in two seconds, one minute, one moment. Everything's normal and the next Bowman it's not. And, and it takes so much, it seems to me, it would take so much longer to process that on an emotional level to be able to get to the point of being okay with those new limitations and even finding value in those limitations.

It seems to me like you found value in your limitations. How does someone else do that?

Nicole Yeates: [00:27:54] yeah, look, it, it does. It took a long time. Look, I think. Hindsight is a valuable thing. And you know, what I can offer in that space now is that reaching out to those support networks doesn't mean you failed it. You know, when, after my accident, like there was a brain injury support group mum would go but  I refused because I didn't want to be like that. And I didn't want to acknowledge that. I was like that. I spent, a number of years in denial and trying to fight the reality of miles of reality. That probably delayed some of my rehabilitation because, you know, if I'd gone to those brain injury support groups, I would have learned from other people about what's working for them.

I wouldn't have had to figure out so much on my own, so I would say embrace everything that is available in the rehabilitation space. Also, it's not about going to appointments and relying on the health professional to do the exercises with you. You've got to do it at home too.

You know, the more you put into your own rehab. The more that you're going to see progress. Um,

Damaged Parents: [00:29:13] Isn't that the truth.

Nicole Yeates: [00:29:15] yeah, you've really got to be motivated and focused on your goals. You know, it's goals are so important having, you know, where do I want to be? All this rehabilitation is happening, but having a goal to reach for will keep you motivated and on track.

It's really important.

Damaged Parents: [00:29:35] So, what do you tell someone if,   somebody comes in  and they're in occupational therapy and they don't, they can't see forward and, and they're barely making it there. What do you tell them?

Nicole Yeates: [00:29:53] look, I work from a strengths perspective though. You know, I might do a transferable skills analysis with them and look at all the skills that they currently have and how they may be transferable to other areas. That's one thing I might do to actually start pulling out the strengths and having a positive conversation, not just a conversation about the barriers and limitations and so forth, but looking from that strengths perspective, I might also,  look at their hobbies and interests.

You know, what can we start there? Is there something that they want to learn? Is it a hobby? Do they want to learn knitting? Do they want, we can turn that. Into a career sometimes. Yeah. Or a job at the very least.

Damaged Parents: [00:30:39] I like that perspective. Okay. So I've been asking, because of course I have a disability, I've got those questions. I'm not going to deny it. So, I have complex regional pain syndrome in both hands.

Nicole Yeates: [00:30:52] Okay.

Damaged Parents: [00:30:53] The left one is locked in this shape. It's not going anywhere. And the right one is a very limited range of motion. so I've basically got use of my finger and my thumb, in the States they say, one. One thing that you don't get is a person to help. Right? So if you go to a job, they'll give you what they call accommodations, but those accommodations don't include another person. So for instance, to do the podcast, I've got to, I can do the interviews and talk and everything, and then I've got a daughter who's doing the editing and the, believe it or not, the caregivers enjoy it too sometimes.

And they want to do it too. which is super helpful because I just can't do, I, I can't, um, physically do the task. I can talk to people and I enjoy it. Now. I also heard you talking about the, the memory issue and that's also a problem because I have significant chronic pain. So, um, even, you know, I can't take notes during our.

Our, uh, conference my interviews. Right. So, I have to hold it and sometimes I lose that question and something else pops up and I just have to let it go. I, if I hold too hard, then I miss the conversation. Um, but so what is it like over there? I mean, let's say you had somebody come in and I have it in my legs a little bit too.

Somebody comes in in my situation. And you said you're in Australia, right? So what do you guys do with that person?

Nicole Yeates: [00:32:37] Okay, let me give you an example. All the lady that I used to do personal care work for in my last year of university,  she had severe cerebral palsy as a result of a blood clot when she was born. She couldn't move well. She had didn't have control over any part of her body, really, except her head.

And, to some degree. She could, navigate with the, her feet, on the wheelchair. You know, she needed to sort of move the wheelchair over on tiles, for example, where it was easy to move. She might be able to do that, but it would depend on the day she worked full-time she relied on a roster of staff like me to do everything that we would do for ourselves, clean areas, brush our teeth.

Make dinner, clean the house, dress ourselves, get her out of bed. Literally everything she relied on a roster of staff to do, but with the amazing technology that we have, she was able to operate a computer. So she had a headache piece with this. What do you call it? Uh, aphasia problem too.

Uh, like a stick that came out the top of her head, it was a plastic wand type thing, and her computer was adapted so that she could use it with this wand and she would use her head and, you know, with the keyboard and she was a disability researcher.

Damaged Parents: [00:34:10] nice.

Nicole Yeates: [00:34:11] Yeah.

Damaged Parents: [00:34:12] It sounds like she ended up having to create her own company, if you will. Cause I don't see going to a job job. I'm going to say that. Yeah.

Nicole Yeates: [00:34:22] No, actually it was a government worker. She worked for the government. Yeah. She was an employee.

Damaged Parents: [00:34:27] And so they provided all of that assistance for her.

Nicole Yeates: [00:34:30] Yeah.

Damaged Parents: [00:34:31] That is fantastic.

Nicole Yeates: [00:34:37] It is, well, I'm not sure that they provided, everything. I'm not sure if yeah, like I think the adapted technology, yes. That the computer at home, she had one as well that she could use. So that would have been at her cost, but, she did set up a company. That employed me and other staff that who were her support workers, her and another couple of people with a disability set up this company to provide, 24 seven around the clock care, for people with disabilities.

And yeah, so she was amazing. She's passed now, but,

Damaged Parents: [00:35:22] she sounds amazing. I'm just intrigued as to how it worked.

Nicole Yeates: [00:35:27] Yeah.

Damaged Parents: [00:35:28] And I know it's a little off topic. Sorry about that.

Nicole Yeates: [00:35:33] So right now it's all about overcoming barriers, that's, so much of what I do in my work and I've had to do it for myself literally. And when I was ever presented with a challenge or. It's not like Qantas, how?

Damaged Parents: [00:35:52] Yeah, I think that's been the frustrating thing for me is, they'll give you what I've been told is, assistive technology per se, but having an, a helper on the property waiting to help me or to help do the computer work or anything is just not an option out here. So,

Nicole Yeates: [00:36:12] Yeah. But look at you, you're still that hasn't stopped. You look at you, you're still doing podcasts and you've figured out , how to do that. And

Damaged Parents: [00:36:20] Only recently,

Nicole Yeates: [00:36:22] it doesn't matter. You did

Damaged Parents: [00:36:23] but I did it. Yeah. Yeah. So, right. You know, so, so in that, I, I think because I've got frustrated, I'm like, why do I keep waiting for them to figure it out? Why it doesn't make it? You know, it's like how instead it became. Okay. What. What needs to happen. And maybe part of it was that the kids were old enough to want to, to help and that they were interested in.

The other one is I've got, I realized that the caregivers I have are willing to assist in my disability, which gets into  all kinds of other problems  in the United States, with, laws and guidelines, the guidelines.  Basically, they're not supposed to help with my disability as far as caregivers go.

So that's super disappointing and, and hurtful, but, luckily I've had really. There's only one company that I had that was not helpful. And I got rid of them because they told me I couldn't have the kids in the car. I said, well, what if I want to get that cobweb? Well, we can't help with your disability and you need a housekeeper.

If you want somebody to get a cobweb. And I was like, are you kidding me? And then I'm like, okay, there's big problems here that need to be fixed.

Nicole Yeates: [00:37:35] Yeah, that sounds like there's a disconnect for sure.

Damaged Parents: [00:37:40] Yeah, there really is. And, , so I actually learned a lot of that. And then I thought, what needs to happen is we need to bring people together to realize that we're all similar and we're all struggling. All of us, every single one of us. And then, you know, I was praying and meditating and, and the podcast plan came about and I was reading, um, I think it was originals by Adam Grant and in it, they were talking about like the women's suffrage movement in the United States and how at first they went around yelling justice, justice, justice, and no one wanted to hear them.

And they had to tag on to prohibition or something like that. I want to say. And I, at that point in time, I thought, you know what? I don't. If I go around yelling justice, justice, justice, I think there that the book is right. I don't think they're going to hear me. They're going to want to put on their boxing gloves and say, I'm right and you're wrong. And so the best way to go about it was to bring people together and to make a point without blatantly making a point to show it and to question it and to investigate it because. With your traumatic brain injury. And, in fact, you said you had a limp, but what are your, you said you had some physical disabilities

Nicole Yeates: [00:39:02] Yeah, I still have partial paralysis in areas of my bodies, which I don't, consciously recognize. But it's when I do things like, you know, when I fall over, I always pull over to the left. Um, my left side is weaker than my right side. Well I had, I on a tattooed on one stage and this was about 15 years ago and yeah, and I could hardly feel the left side, but could feel every pinprick on the right

Damaged Parents: [00:39:29] Oh, wow.

Nicole Yeates: [00:39:31] When I'm really tired. I may be now. Um, I smile crooked because I've got some residual paralysis on the left side of my face. My pain tolerance is incredibly high in some areas which can be dangerous. And I go through some of that in the book that you know, how I've ended up in hospital, um, in emergency, because I couldn't feel pain.

Well, one of the reasons I couldn't feel pain and it nearly killed me.

Damaged Parents: [00:39:56] Well,

Nicole Yeates: [00:39:56] Again. Um, so yeah, there, there are some long-term impacts on not just the sort of short term memory, fatigue, concentration, those sorts of things that are a struggle every day.  but  there's ways around it and ways to manage it.

And that's what I do.

Damaged Parents: [00:40:17] I think for me, because mine's chronic pain at the end. And of course the limitation and range of motion and all that good stuff is remember is pacing is so important. Um, and not getting mad at myself about it just being like, well, today's a nap day.

Nicole Yeates: [00:40:38] And that's a part of acceptance, you know, and it, it takes quite a while to move through those because when you get a disability, you go through a grief process as well. For those things that you weren't able to do, or you're not able to do any longer. And, that, that altered reality is I keep saying, you know, it's, um, there is, uh, A grief process around that and getting to that acceptance stage where you can ask sort of go, well, you know, this is the way it is today and that's okay.

So I'm going to listen to my body. That's huge because you know, if, if you weren't at that stage, you'd be fighting it and potentially doing yourself more harm than good.

Damaged Parents: [00:41:19] yeah, quality of life really sucked when I didn't do more miserable often than not. And you know, I forget where my question was leading, so I'm just going to move on to the next one.

Nicole Yeates: [00:41:32] matter because I have one conversation anyway.

Damaged Parents: [00:41:38] But, uh, so now you're CA you're also caring for your mom who has cancer.

Nicole Yeates: [00:41:45] That's right. Yeah. So mum was diagnosed with terminal cancer about three and a half years ago. I didn't have any choice in these stubborn genes. Angela. I got them both from both sides from both parents. Very, very stubborn. So she was pretty much advised to tidy or off of her affairs, three and a half years ago.

And, um, she's still probably Fisher than my 72 year old simply one-year-olds.

Damaged Parents: [00:42:10] Oh, wow.

Nicole Yeates: [00:42:11] But yeah, she is the treatment hasn't worked to get her into any sort of remission. So she's in a clinical trial now and you know, we're hoping that that will give us some life extension, but yeah, she she's going through some challenges now.

Damaged Parents: [00:42:27] Oh, that's hard. Yeah, that's just hard and

she's lucky to have you.

Nicole Yeates: [00:42:33] we've moved in together. So, you know, I can, I can help out and yeah.

Damaged Parents: [00:42:38] Now, how is that with the. It's almost , it's not really a role reversal, but I know sometimes that happens. I mean, as far as  you're taking care of her, not that there's a parental role reversal. Do you see, do you

Nicole Yeates: [00:42:53] Yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah, yeah. Or it is that the tables are kind of turning in that it's my turn to sort of take care of her now. And, as, as her disease, Progressive's, you know, more so, but. Look, she's still, she's still a mega, she's amazing. She's so resilient. And look, she's been a great role model for resilience.

For me, she's had a lot of challenges in her life, herself, which, you know, I saw her overcome as a child. She taught me an incredible work ethic, which is why I had my first part-time job at 12 years old. And, so yeah, we're lucky to have each other and we've got, got a nice house where, you know, she's basically, we got downstairs and I've got upstairs, so we have our own space, but can still be there for each other.

So it's ideal.

Damaged Parents: [00:43:47] now earlier, you had talked about how, I mean, some of the things you said, like when they wanted to take her off you off of the ventilator and it's like, well, you don't know my daughter, those statements. And, were those. Normal statements that are things that you got to hear, that your mom believed in you to that extent as you grew up, or was that more noticeable or what, from what you remember, like later after the injury saying absolutely not.

I believe in her or did. Yeah, it seems like you just knew she believed in you, but I want to know how you do that.

Nicole Yeates: [00:44:23] Well look, mom and I have a fairly special and unique relationship because my father died when I was three years old and she was left in a foreign country, basically, um, with no access to single mothers benefits or anything like that. So she had to work two or three jobs to bring me up. It was so it's pretty much been just her and I all along.

So we're really close. And when the doctors said, you know, these negative prognosis, suggested turning life support off, she was like, no, you don't know my daughter she's strong. She's stubborn. And I don't accept that. So she refused to sign any organ donation forms or anything have any part of that conversation.

Damaged Parents: [00:45:12] And do you think, hearing those stories and her telling you of how those things went, do you think that helped you in your recovery in some ways

Nicole Yeates: [00:45:22] Oh, look, I didn't really, learn about that for some years after. And through writing the book, it's given me a, I guess, a deeper appreciation of what mum went through because we had those conversations, to go into more depth about her experience going through all that as a mother, as a carer. And yeah, it was really, I mean, it was quite traumatic for her to go back through all of that.

But I guess for me it was cathartic. Um, and you know, as I said, I had a deeper, I now have a deeper appreciation of just how hard mom fought for me during that critical time. And afterwards with, I had rehabilitation, I mean, because the accident was in New Zealand, they have a different insurance system over there called accident compensation where it doesn't matter if you're injured in a car accident.

 A work accident or just a haphazard accident, it's all covered by the same system. And it's all magic. It's a no fault system. So I had rehab right from the bed. I didn't have to wait to Sue anybody or any rubbish like that. I had occupational therapy, physiotherapy, hydrotherapy, psychology, speech therapy, you know, it was.  It was really amazing, you know, some of the things, some of the moral alternative things she had to fight for like massage therapy, for example. Yeah, they were also spiritual healers. I'm not joking. She tried everything.

Damaged Parents: [00:46:56] wow. How much? Um, I was just thinking I received, uh, my sister is a massage therapist and, uh, She, in fact, she sent me a note that a massage therapists are considered alternative medical practitioners now in California. So the department of public health has now decided, uh, which I think is great because although I can't tolerate touch, uh, she does work with a lot of people who have chronic pain and, it, my, from my perspective, it.

With COVID especially was why would you take away the chronic pain patients ability to relieve pain? Because if you take that massage therapy away, that there's a higher likelihood, they're going to end up in the ER, because they're miserable and we're trying to keep them out of the ER. So this made no sense to me.

And so I was trying to give her those arguments and I think she wrote letters and stuff, but, Yeah, I just, I I'm one of those, I think humans are amazing and yes, people drive me nuts sometimes, but I really think the world does that everyone gets to have this complex experience of being a human. So, um, and to not we're we all suffer anyway, so that if we can.

Alleviate that suffering like your app is, is going to help people to not suffer as much. Hopefully.  So good news for California now, massage therapist or alternative medical practitioners. So

Nicole Yeates: [00:48:36] Yeah. Okay. Thats good. That's great.

Damaged Parents: [00:48:39] It's amazing. Like the things that COVID has brought about. Right.

Nicole Yeates: [00:48:43] Yeah.

Damaged Parents: [00:48:44] my perspective is now a lot of people know what it's like to become disabled if you will, because they've been quarantined to their home.

They're stuck. I mean, I don't know in. In Australia, like I was telling you about the caregivers. So for instance, the guidance, the Medicare guidelines say that, you know, I can go to, they can take me to the doctor, they can take me to the grocery store and I can go to religious services for short period of time.

There's nothing in there that says mental health. There's nothing in there that says anything like that. And so you kind of have to fight for it and say, wait, hold on. I'm human. But then we don't see. The disabled people out and about in the community. And then you wonder why when they are out people, look, they give, they look cause they haven't seen it because now it's new.

Nicole Yeates: [00:49:38] Yeah. Yeah, but even in the COVID sort of situation, like I know here in Australia, it brought about some really significant changes that weren't designed for people with disability, but actually were a huge advantage to pay for a disability. For example, the Westfield shopping centers, which are a whole brand of their own, They put together something where people could shop online at a Westfield shopping center from any store and yeah, some Westfield shopping centers that pay a hundred, the stores, laced.

And so you can do your shopping online at any of the stores in a wheel Westfield shopping center and pay for it online and then drive in to the car park and someone loads it into the car park for you.

Damaged Parents: [00:50:24] that's awesome.

Nicole Yeates: [00:50:25] How amazing is that?

Damaged Parents: [00:50:26] Yeah. Yeah. Cause it's so hard when you can't walk far

Nicole Yeates: [00:50:30] Woo.

Damaged Parents: [00:50:31] to go there and get it. Like my kids every once in a while, you know what they go shopping sometimes it's either take, we have a little tri-fold fishing chair, if you will. We'll take that. Or if, if it's, if I think it might be a long time, cause my oldest loves to just meander around we'll take the wheelchair and I'll walk.

And you know, I used to be embarrassed, you know, when people would see me walking with a wheelchair following me and, I decided. Chances are, they're probably cheering me on and if not, that's their problem. But the story that works for me is they're cheering me on.

Nicole Yeates: [00:51:12] fair enough.

Damaged Parents: [00:51:15] But yeah, I mean, I don't know if you had to do that also with kind of the story you told yourself when you were healing from everything that happened.

Nicole Yeates: [00:51:26] Yeah, look, it was, there's just so much of that holding on to that. There was hope that something else was possible. And just through those small steps, you know, my first foray back into sort of any sort of employment was a couple of hours of work in a library. Just decking bookshelves, which was great from a concentration.

I can't say that I enjoyed the work, but it was something, you know, it was a stash. And then the next job was filing, you know, filing in an office, um, a medical office, actually my massage therapist office. And, so I'd go in after school a couple of days a week just for a couple of hours and do all their filing.

And that was. And other progression because it involved a social environment where you could, talk to people. And, you know, for any sort of injury, those small steps of success are the building blocks for them.

Damaged Parents: [00:52:22] Yeah, it's so important. And not being punished in a way because of it,  like some of the,  for me, I couldn't understand. I knew I couldn't use my hands. I didn't understand why. My mind wasn't valued because I could train, I could've sat and trained people. I could have managed people.

There was so much I could have done. But instead it was, well, I'm sorry, you can't go back to work. So we're letting you go. And  the emotional devastation that comes, the trauma, that trauma. Right. Was so devastating because now I felt like I had no value and couldn't, you know, I'm injured.

I'm in pain all the time. Now on top of it, I have no value. I'm a single mom of two young girls. I think they were six and eight. And so I spent months crying. and. Then the only way I was able to make it through was to clearly say, I'm going to be the best mom I can be. And that's how I identified myself.

So back in October, when the one company said, well, we can't, you can't take your kids to school. You can't take them to, you know, I couldn't provide for their basic basic needs. Then I became angry and I was like, hold on, something's wrong? And just, you know, and then, and in the United States, basically you become sequestered as a hostage in your own home if you're following those national guidelines.

And I don't think that's appropriate. For the simple reason that I'm injured, I'm on house arrest.

Nicole Yeates: [00:54:05] Yeah, that's not right. What sort of work did you do before all this Angela?

Damaged Parents: [00:54:10] So I did a lot, but I was in the medical field when it happened. before that I'd been a mortgage broker. I also worked in commercial property management, truck, body manufacturing, banking. Uh, it was the president of a local chamber, started a, you know, a village enhancement committee.

So I was pretty active person.

Nicole Yeates: [00:54:33] Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, with all those different skills, you know, many of them relating to customer service and, you could be a trainer of China or customer service and.

Damaged Parents: [00:54:45] Yeah. That's what I thought. That's why I didn't understand. So it's, I'm fascinated to hear that what is happening in Australia is much different than what is happening here and that, it seems like you. In the environment you're in, you're looking for how, where is another value that we can use?

Where is something they've got to have something let's find it and let's teach them how to use it.

Nicole Yeates: [00:55:15] Yeah. Yeah. And  they're, uh, different systems. Um, you know, there are insurance systems. We have Endis insurance system, which is only a few years old here in Australia, and it's specifically for disability issues. So it's a funding body that helps with, support at home. And all those other branches of that, you know, support workers that come in or interventions that may be needed to help cross some of those injury barriers.

And yeah, it's fantastic. You know, we here in Australia, you know, that aren't close to the lucky country for no reason. And I do rely on the brain injury websites on Facebook, the groups and so forth. I so often read how people are trapped in a situation because of insurance and lack of insurance and things.

And yeah, people are basically headstrong because of it. And that's not

Damaged Parents: [00:56:10] yeah, it's not. And I think it comes down to  that basic human right.  Although there's an injury, there doesn't mean that I have no value. So how do we find that value and how do we use that value to better the world?

Nicole Yeates: [00:56:24] Yeah, because you don't want those legislative, Frameworks, you know, that enable the modifications request modifications and so forth to just be lip service. There has to be a substantial underlying,  action to them.

Damaged Parents: [00:56:41] Yeah. And because like I was saying about the caregiving companies, I've had caregiving companies for almost 10 years of that, I only had the one that ever came in and said, Oh no, no, no, you cannot. Absolutely. You absolutely cannot do that. And when they did that, it

I knew it was wrong, but then I realized they were using those guidelines. They were using the guidelines for maximum. So instead of looking at, as a minimum, they're looking at it as this is all we will do.

Nicole Yeates: [00:57:15] The reality could have been, that person was scared of Heights and didn't want to get on a ladder. So they're going to use the legislation.

Damaged Parents: [00:57:21] Yeah, no, it was the regional people that came in and then multiple caregivers with that particular company

Nicole Yeates: [00:57:29] right. So they were all

yeah. Programs.

Damaged Parents: [00:57:32] get, they only wanted to. So basically my, from my perspective, I was treated like a dog. If you will, or a thing I'm going to feed you, bathe you, you know, do the bare minimum and that's it.

And that certainly didn't help with self esteem or anything. And I, but ultimately humanely, I knew it was wrong

Nicole Yeates: [00:57:56] Yeah. And you have enough challenges that an unnecessary challenge like that.

Damaged Parents: [00:58:02] Yeah. Yeah. And I couldn't imagine what if that, what about the other people with this company? And then I learned about the kids, you know, I learned about , the there's, so there's laws that help disabled parents in the States, and there are laws and in California, and there are laws that help disabled children.

There's nothing there to protect the child of a disabled parent though. So. I can get support.

Nicole Yeates: [00:58:28] Hm.

Damaged Parents: [00:58:28] I can't get anything for my normal child because she's not disabled. So then that neglect thing I was talking about earlier, that neglect thing comes in,  then I get in trouble for neglect because I can't fulfill my basic duties.

When there's someone literally sitting here, that's capable of helping me do that, that task.

Nicole Yeates: [00:58:50] Yeah, that's

Damaged Parents: [00:58:52] It just made no sense to me. So, that's where a lot of this came from. That's how this all got started. So I, so part of my, part of it is legislative. And, so while I've got a group of us working on that, all volunteers, right, right now, cause I, that's how it is. And then the podcast. To bring everyone together to recognize that having a disability doesn't change that I'm human. It doesn't change that I struggle. Uh, that even if you look capable doesn't mean you don't also have similar struggles,

Nicole Yeates: [00:59:32] Yeah.

Damaged Parents: [00:59:33] you know, mine just looked different and mine's just a little more visible.

Nicole Yeates: [00:59:39] yeah, yeah. And you know, it's so much the case with mental health as well. You know, you don't see often it's not all the mental health issues, , that people live with and struggle with, but it doesn't mean that they're not there.

Damaged Parents: [00:59:54] right. And that's really hard. Even for me, I don't know about you, but you know, I find myself out in the community sometimes, and sometimes I forget that other people are just having bad days or bad moments.

Nicole Yeates: [01:00:10] Yeah.

Damaged Parents: [01:00:11] And I make the stamp judgment and I decided it's true. I mean, we all do it, right?

Nicole Yeates: [01:00:18] Oh, look, we're human, we're human we're judgemental.

Damaged Parents: [01:00:22] Yeah. So how do we, get people to remember, to not do that?

Nicole Yeates: [01:00:27] well, look, I think the only thing we are actually capable of controlling our is ourselves. We have no control of what other people do think. their actions, et cetera. And I think the sooner that we realize that it's, it's how we react to a situation is our choice. We can be a victim in our lives, or we can be a pilot in our lives.

Pilot chooses the destination, they set the course. They, they know the steps. Well, they plan the steps to get to the destination. You know, we can use. So much of our experiences to be an excuse, not to try or as a reason. As fuel to try. And, you know, I think that, when we, we really embrace that within ourselves and, you know, you're doing things like meditation and, you know, and that's great for the brain and great for mental health then.

Great for creativity because  the podcast  came about through meditation.

Damaged Parents: [01:01:32] Yeah. Yeah.

Nicole Yeates: [01:01:35] So, you know, you made a choice to actually do something positive for yourself in that space. And I think the more people that can do that can, that can look at those enablers and those tools and resources that can enable us to take that next step in progress. We'd all be better off for it.

Damaged Parents: [01:01:57] Yeah. So three things you would want. To let the audience know,  that can help them with that hope and that dream.

Nicole Yeates: [01:02:09] Okay. Well, that's why I write Holding Onto Hope. Finding the New You After Traumatic Brain Injury. So that, um, you know, it's, it is based on my own story, but it's also originally with my allied health hat on. So there's lots of tools, resources, tips, and tricks to, manage not only for the injured person, but for their family caregivers, health professionals.

There's 17 reviews on Amazon from a cross section of that community. People with brain injury cares and health professionals and they all, they gave it five stars or all of them. Also the memory management app that I have coming out, I think that is going to be a game changer for so many people.

It's, I've been utilizing it myself, but the last month just trialing it and you know, so we can get the bugs and things in it before we launch it. And it's amazing. It really is. And I, so, yeah, I've just got to my website, www.holdinghope.com.au, and you'll find information about everything that I'm offering.

I've got mindset and memory boosting workshops coming up in the next week. And that's just a series of three workshops. That basically people can work three, watch one workshop at a time first one's on mindset. The second one's on brain health goal setting. Third one's on memory management strategies.

And, yeah, that's, I'm just want to help people reach their highest potential. That's the whole goal.

Damaged Parents: [01:03:46] So stay stubborn and stay curious. Is that what I'm hearing? I love it.

Nicole Yeates: [01:03:55] And inspiration equal enabling.

Damaged Parents: [01:03:58] There you go. There you go. Well, thank you so much for being on the show today. I really appreciate it.

Nicole Yeates: [01:04:04] my pleasure, Angela. Congratulations on getting this off the ground.

Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Relatively Damaged by Damaged Parents. We've really enjoyed talking to Nicole about how she recovered from traumatic brain injury and how she copes with the residual damage. We especially liked when she gave us hope, check out her book, Holding Onto Hope.

To unite with other damaged people. Connect with us on Tik TOK. Look for damaged parents. This podcast was sponsored in part by Arches. Audio will be here next week. Still relatively damaged. See you then.