“All these weird things that make you look quite stupid or lazy, but you’re actually just trying to function properly.”

Matthews suffered a traumatic brain injury after a crash on an electric scooter in 2023. The Christchurch musician says that, in the aftermath, it often felt like she was drunk, but to others, she looked a picture of perfect health.

“As you physically start to look like you’re being a person again, there’s so much going on that people can’t see.”

A night out turned to tragedy

Matthews, 39, doesn’t remember the split second in which her life changed. Husband Alex told her she was talking afterwards, but “I guess your brain protects you from remembering those sorts of things”.

She knows it started as a regular night out in July 2023.

“We were heading home after a really lovely night. We were only about a minute around the corner from our house … we needed to get back to relieve my mum, who was babysitting.”

So, they grabbed e-scooters that didn’t have helmets attached.

“I remember feeling very, very happy … and then I don’t remember anything.”

As she was travelling at the “top speed a scooter would go”, a pedestrian walked into the bike lane. The pedestrian was uninjured, but Matthews was knocked off, “flying” over the handlebars.

Her face was covered in blood, and there were injuries to her body and ears. After arriving at Christchurch hospital by ambulance, she needed surgery to stop a major brain bleed and was in an induced coma for four days. She had a traumatic brain injury.

“The next thing I remember is waking up in ICU … I woke up totally terrified. I didn’t know what had happened, and I didn’t know I’d had brain surgery. I was in a hospital gown, surrounded by people, and I just kept thinking, ‘What the hell is going on?’

“When I was in the hospital, I had some weird things with feeling like death was standing in the room.”

After two weeks in hospital and with staples in her head, Matthews thought things would start returning to normal.

It took her a long time to understand what had happened to her, and even longer to realise that you don’t recover from a brain injury in just a couple of months.

“We got home, and I was an absolute wreck. I was sleeping all the time and couldn’t even get up to make a cup of tea. I couldn’t do anything … it started to feel quite scary because it was like, ‘Okay, so now what do we do?’”

Walking took longer and could only be done in short bursts. Damage to the bones in her ears led to tinnitus and hearing loss.

It wasn’t until a week after leaving hospital that Matthews learned she had been referred to Christchurch’s Laura Fergusson Brain Injury Trust. After her first appointment, she burst into tears as she sat in her car with Alex, knowing she and her family didn’t have to go through the journey alone.

Hidden costs, unseen struggles

Since 2021, the Laura Fergusson Brain Injury Trust has seen 69 people with varying forms of traumatic brain injury from scooter accidents. This year, its data shows it has assisted one new person with a traumatic brain injury from an e-scooter accident roughly every two weeks.

Matthews’ therapist, Pip Cape, says she was most struck by her resilience during the year they spent together. At the start of her treatment, Matthews could barely walk or stand straight.

“[She] never complained about anything,” Cape says. “She acknowledged the incredible challenges that she was facing, but she was more focused on, ‘Okay, well let’s move forward. How can I do that one step at a time?’

“Sometimes it’s important to acknowledge that we get taught things as well from our clients, and Bryony was incredibly inspiring.“

When they first met, Cape saw the overwhelming relief in Matthews’ eyes, the realisation that she didn’t have to recover alone. She says a major part of the journey for any patient is realising the hidden challenges of a brain injury and learning to slow down.

“It’s not like having a broken leg where it’s visible. So much of brain injury is invisible. And recovery isn’t linear. We can’t tell someone they’ll be better in three months.”

‘It affects the whole family’

From the days she could hardly walk to the waves of overwhelming fatigue, Matthews’ family have been “her rock”.

But she’s learned the trauma affects them too.

While his wife was recovering, Alex was running a restaurant and looking after their daughter Hazel, now 8.

“And then I was home, and he had to look after what was pretty much an old invalid woman … I’m very, very grateful for him and all our network,” Matthews says.

“He did an amazing job with Hazel while I was in hospital … it was really important to him just to keep life going and not make it seem scarier than it already was.”

Matthews is still coming to terms with the impact her injury has had on Hazel.

“My daughter was amazing. She was so happy to have me home, and she looked after me in her own little ways.

“But months later, whenever I tried to go out, she’d have a meltdown because she was terrified that I wasn’t coming back … That was heartbreaking.”

Trauma to triumph

Immediately after the accident, Matthews was in no state to sing or play guitar. Damage to her ear left her partially deaf (something she still struggles with today), and writing was one of the only things she could do.

“I started writing things down maybe three or four weeks after the accident … a whole bunch of poems. I wasn’t singing – I couldn’t sing – but I knew eventually I’d turn them into songs.”

One of those songs, on an album called Brain Storm, is dedicated to Hazel.

“It’s about her trauma, because this didn’t just happen to me, it happened to our whole family.”

While her health has improved over the past three years thanks to rehab and neuropsychology, stress brings back fatigue and brain fog. She also says she’s “way more forgetful”.

“I have to make sure I don’t push myself, otherwise I crash with fatigue. It’s forced me to stop and do less.”

Matthews wants people to understand the hidden cost paid by those with brain injuries, and she’s ready to tour her songs after a grant from Creative New Zealand.

It will be a challenge, both mentally and physically, but it’s one she’s up for.

“It felt like a really important story to share – not just because of my experience, but because of so many other people who go through similar experiences.

“I’m not saying I’m glad it happened, but things happen, and we evolve as humans, and so much happens because of hardships.”

Bryony Matthews Brain Storm Tour

Tickets at littleandromeda.co.nz.

Mitchell Hageman joined the Herald’s entertainment and lifestyle team in 2024. He previously worked as a multimedia journalist for Hawke’s Bay Today.