Every morning when he looks in the mirror, Joshua Ditchmen sees two young men staring back.
Navigating life with double vision is just one of the challenges the 18-year-old brain bleed survivor from Wishart juggles now.
Joshua had a massive stroke in 2023 and fell from a quad bike at a friend’s place in Buaraba in the Western Downs region.
A Brisbane-based LifeFlight helicopter flew him to Princess Alexandra Hospital.
Joshua doesn’t remember the cow paddock morphing into an outdoor intensive care unit but he’s grateful the LifeFlight helicopter came quickly.
He’s also grateful critical care doctor Felicity Gilbert was able to stand on a plastic stool to intubate him while he lay inside the chopper.
Dr Gilbert together with LifeFlight nurse Carlie Manson and local Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) paramedics worked on the ground to ensure Joshua could be safely transported to hospital.
He’s also grateful that he proved the Princess Alexandra Hospital doctors wrong when they gave him a one per cent chance of survival.
And he’s grateful that he kept fighting when police and social workers told his mum and dad to say goodbye.
Joshua was completely unresponsive when found by his dad Michael that day.
Michael said he knows his son wouldn’t be alive without the chopper and aeromedical team.
“Joshua wouldn’t have made it without LifeFlight because he needed to be intubated, and he needed to get to the hospital quickly,” Michael said.
His mother Sonja has replayed the day of the stroke over and over again.
She and Michael were with Joshua when he expressed his deep gratitude to the crew that saved him at the Brisbane base during a recent reunion.
“Meeting those people who saved Josh was beautiful for us,” Sonja said. “That was closure.”
“Josh is a fighter. He’s so determined.”
Joshua knows from first-hand experience how vital those initial minutes are in the wake of a medical emergency.
It’s why he is encouraging people to attend LifeFlight’s free emergency trauma training workshops, First Minutes Matter.
The workshop is coming to Mount Tyson State School on April 29.
First Minutes Matter equips participants with practical skills for time-critical medical situations like strokes, seizures, snake bites, cardiac events, burns and more.
Almost two years after Josh’s stroke, even simple things like rustling up some bacon and eggs, takes more concentration, effort and time.
While his mates were running around the Carina footy oval on a Thursday night, Joshua was learning to put one foot in front of the other.
He has turned his in-built competitiveness into a game to help him succeed.
He still has an awkward, numb feeling that runs down his left arm and leg but is training for a 21 kilometre half marathon.
He spent months relearning how to speak with a speech pathologist.
“I like to talk a bit slower now because sometimes I lose a word, they can sometimes take me a little longer to find.
“I can get a bit stuck.
“But when I see myself in the mirror, I say to myself: ‘it’s up to you Joshua to make your story a good one’.”
He’s just started at Toastmasters, learning the art of public speaking and wants to share his story with young people to help dig teenagers out of the depths of depression.
“The universe, God, or whatever you believe in has given me a second chance at life, and I don’t want to waste it feeling sorry for myself,” he said.
“I love moving forward, growing and getting better.”
Josh doesn’t waste time thinking what his life would have been like without the stroke.
“The way I look at it is that the accident gave me two doors to go through – one of the doors is positive and one of the doors is negative and I’m choosing to go through the positive door.
“I want to go and help as many people as I can to have a positive mindset. Even if I am able to help just one person, it wouldn’t be a wasted effort.”
