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Childhood best friends make uplifting brain injury recovery film

26 April 2019

Stuart Nixon and Ciaran Pasi have been best mates since they were four.

But in 2015 their friendship changed overnight. Stuart suffered a skull fracture, requiring two major brain operations and his placement in an induced coma.

Four years on, Ciaran filmed and directed Stuart for a new documentary, To Wake A New, about his incredible recovery and how it affected their friendship.

Stuart survived a life-changing accident, but how much of the old him survives?

Stuart opens up to lifelong friend Ciaran about the impact of his brain injury.

Stuart’s life as he knew it was halted in its tracks. The injury represented a major shift in his relationships with those closest to him.

Two years of debilitating challenges followed, including difficulty regulating emotions, struggling to read people and eruptions of temper.

I鈥檓 definitely a lot slower but I鈥檓 just happy to be alive.

Stuart Nixon

“I was nasty ... tearing up the house ... being full of hate then hours later coming down from it and thinking ‘What did I just do?’.”

With the worst eventually behind him, Stuart worked with Ciaran to tell the story of his journey to recovery.

“In those first weeks it was as though Stuart had the eyes of someone new, looking at the world again for the first time, familiar and yet with everything markedly different.

“He had this piercing, thousand-yard stare that went straight through you and felt so alien to how my mate of over 20 years had looked at me before.

As the months passed – and with hard work and determination – Stuart’s recovery progressed. “His eyes and expressions began to warm. His beautifully unique humour and eccentricities crept back to the surface and his confidence grew.”

Stuart reflects that he sometimes thinks that the version of him who didn’t go through the injury would be “complaining a lot more than me.

“I’m definitely a lot slower, but I’m just happy to be alive”.