Dusty Wentworth

It’s the 28th of August already—can you believe it? Where did the summer go? One moment I was bracing myself for six weeks of school holidays, and the next I’m sitting in the garden, basking in the sunshine, kids playing in the background, reflecting on how fast it’s all flown by. Now, to be clear, I wasn’t worried about the usual summer holiday challenges—you know, keeping the kids entertained without requiring a bank balance that rivals Elon Musk’s. No, my real anticipation came from the fact that this was my first summer as a dad in a wheelchair. If you’ve read my earlier holiday blog (Wheelchairs, Lovebirds, and Little White Eggs: A Summer’s Day in the Garden Jungle), you’ll know I had more than a few doubts about how this would play out. Would I keep up? Would the kids adapt? Would I spend most of the summer watching from the sidelines while they ran rings around me? Well, let me tell you—none of that happened. Game Changers and Wheelchair Bandits Early on, my new Quic...

I began posting my blogs never once thinking about readers. Writing was simply therapy—a way to make sense of life after a ruptured brain aneurysm nearly killed me, stealing my memories and identity. I’d been posting for weeks when, one day, I decided to fill out my blog profile properly. That’s when I discovered the analytics tab. Out of curiosity, I clicked to see what it measured… and I was stunned. People were actually reading what I’d written—hundreds of them! Given my cognitive difficulties, I assumed I’d misread the data. I called my wife over to double-check. She confirmed it. They were real. People were reading. It’s no exaggeration to say that, in that moment, for the first time since waking up in hospital over a year earlier, I felt a meaningful life was possible. That small group of blog readers did more for my healing than seven months in a neurological rehabilitation centre ever had. When my brain aneurysm ruptured, it shattered my life into a million pieces. ...