Swansea woman now volunteering for Brain Injury Service after it helped her recover
A woman from Swansea has hailed the work of the Brain Injury Service after she fell down the stairs while out for a meal on a Friday night.
Following the fall, 45-year-old Nathalie McCormack suffered a bleed to her brain and required significant rehabilitation.
She now volunteers with the Brain Injury Service, helping with community groups in activities such as gardening and up-cycling as a means of giving back to those that were in her situation.
Speaking to ITV Wales, Natalie said: "From the person that I used to be which was lots of outgoing and social and that type of thing to not being able to talk properly, stand properly, walk properly, it's just such an adaption of life that you really need to do."
"With the help of other people and knowing other things that I used to be able to do to help myself, it's important to go out and help people who might have the same issues.
"It really meant absolutely everything to me. It was something for me rather to get up to and go I'm going to go there, I'm going to do this today and then just having the lovely generosity of people around you it really is important.
"Rather than just sitting in a room dealing with things on your own, it's if you encounter other people to help them with their thoughts.
"You can actually tell from people's faces when you look at them and you just say to them it's O.K. or I used to do that or I wasn't able to talk.
"Being part of this has been really important and I feel that it's important that I am available to help out people who've got this along with my beautiful ladies who work here."
Vanessa Knight, Occupational Therapist at the Community Brain Injury Service at Morriston Hospital, explained in more detail the work of the Brain Injury Service.
She said: "We look at the needs of people following a brain injury. We try and understand how everyone is impacted.
"Many of the things people are affected by are actually invisible so it can be in people's thought process memory planning. It can affect people emotionally from anxiety to depression.
"We try to support people to rebuild their lives. that can be from leisure activities. Things they do to take care of themselves, to working, driving- absolutely everything.
"We are a community service which do meet people in their own home if needed but also we run a range of groups. We've seen gardening today but we've also got an up-cyclycling group running and we've had surfing groups."
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