When Al Davison woke up in a hospital bed in July 2023, he had lost three weeks of his life and part of his skull.
A fall down a flight of stairs had caused a serious brain injury. Davison was rushed to hospital in Kitchener, then transferred to London, where surgeons removed part of his skull to stop the bleeding in his brain. When he came to, he had an acquired brain injury and a long recovery ahead.
Once he was stable, Davison returned to Kitchener, where a representative from Hamilton’s Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) Program visited his bedside and invited him to continue his recovery there.
On August 30, 2023, Davison arrived at Hamilton Health Sciences’ (HHS) Regional Rehabilitation Centre (RRC), Ontario’s provincial centre for ABI rehabilitation. He had to relearn the most basic things: how to walk, how to eat. A multidisciplinary team built a plan around his goals and let him move at his own pace.
Over nearly seven months, Davison worked with physiotherapists, rehabilitation therapists and other allied health professionals to rebuild his strength, his confidence and his independence, one hard-won step at a time.
“They took time with me and they made sure to let me do what I felt I can do,” he says. “Everybody there was absolutely fantastic with me.”
Specialized equipment helped, too. In the gym, Davison practised movements, strengthened his muscles and gradually reclaimed abilities many of us never think twice about.
“The facilities and the gym were phenomenal,” he remarks.
Donors have helped make those spaces possible. Their gifts funded much of the equipment and therapeutic technology that patients like Davison use every day in their recovery.
That donor-funded equipment gives RRC teams the tools to tailor each patient’s recovery, and it keeps the latest technology within reach for people from across the province.
Every day of his recovery, he kept going for his daughter, wife, mother, two sisters, best friends and for the team who worked so hard alongside him. More than two and a half years later, he still thinks about those people every day.
When Davison went home in February 2024, he felt like he was back to his old self. Now, he wants other patients to have what he had.
You can help make that happen. Your gift equips HHS teams with the tools and technology patients need to take their first steps, reclaim their everyday lives and look toward the future with hope.