‘I was losing so much – I had to change my outlook'

Jane Enright, 54, from Toronto endured three life-changing tragedies in just one year, but vowed to bounce back

- KIRSTEN JONES

Sitting in the stands at my son’s volleyball tournament, I’m bursting with pride as I cheer him on in the midst of the excitable crowd. “Way to go” I yell, beaming proudly. Then, suddenly, a frustrated player hits the ball hard. It careers at high speed from the court and strikes my head – BAM! – with an almighty crack before it all goes black...

We were in our local stadium in Toronto and it was 2017. I didn’t see it coming and neither did my son, who watched it all helplessly on the court below as spectators jumped up to help me. By the time I saw a doctor, the damage was done.

“You have life-altering concussion and a serious brain injury,” he gravely told me. But that was only the beginning of my journey. From then on life became about enduring crippling headaches and fighting to overcome my speech loss and hearing.

For nine months I worked hard to improve my speech aphasia (word-finding issues), and I grappled with short-term memory loss, just like Dory in Finding Nemo. A friend told me, “You’re still you, but sometimes you’re just delightfully ditzy.” I lived in a new reality and I had to accept this new me.

A black curtain had come down in my brain – I couldn’t say the right words or remember the right things. I knew I couldn’t return to the work I loved, talking for a living as a strategic planner. I’d helped people deal with change by looking at things from the outside in. Little did I know just how useful my skills would be in my own life.

A year after my accident, in 2018, my fiancé Clayton was in a car crash and hit his head. We still don’t know what happened that day but 24 hours later, he collapsed onto the concrete floor in our garage and suffered a big bleed on the brain.