Zach

“I honestly can’t imagine not being helped by NIISQ.” 

Zach lost his right leg and sustained additional injuries to his left arm in a motorbike accident in February 2018. 

Following his accident, Zach chose to be rapidly discharged from hospital to home. The support that he received early on was central to helping him towards a successful recovery. Zach’s mother took significant amounts of time off from her nursing career to be with him following his accident and his Support Planner worked closely with Zach and his very supportive family to ensure his ongoing recovery. 

“NIISQ have supported me immensely,” Zach said. 

To begin with, NIISQ funded a sitting prosthesis and various other injury related equipment, including a manual wheelchair. 

Zach also received funding from NIISQ for necessary home modifications. This included the install of a disability compliant ramp leading to Zach’s backyard, minor modifications to the front stair treads and major bathroom modifications to accommodate his ongoing physical needs. 

“The modifications that have been done on my house are amazing. It makes my day to day living so much easier,” he said. 

Vehicle modifications funded by NIISQ mean Zach can now drive his car to independently maintain social and community connections. He enjoys many different activities, including visits to food festivals in his region. He successfully returned to paid employment, where he works to assist with the placement of labour hire candidates for program services. 

Zach said the modifications were not the only thing NIISQ had done for him.  

“My Support Planner is amazing. They go above and beyond to get stuff done for me, I’m so glad they were assigned to me.” 

NIISQ has continued to focus on building strong relationships to help Zach reach his goals, including those with the amputee clinic at Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital and Zach’s private prosthetist. 

“I honestly can’t imagine not being helped by NIISQ. Without NIISQ, my quality of life would be so low compared to what it is like now,” he said 

Zach recognises that mental fortitude is important following serious personal injury, and his advice to anyone else in similar circumstances is to focus on building active connections and find activities to enjoy post-injury. 

“Just get out and about and be social, don’t let yourself get in your head about things. It will destroy you so you need to keep busy and talk to people about things,” he said. 

“You just have to keep going really, you have to think no matter how bad your experience is there is always someone else out there worse off than you. Life has just thrown a wrench in the cog works for the moment, but things will get better.”