John was 18 when he was crushed under a 680kg bull during a rodeo in Orange. What began as a routine ride became a life changing moment.
When you’re young, you think you’re unbreakable. I’d been riding for years, chasing that rush of fear, focus, and pure adrenaline that hits the second you settle onto the animal.
The rodeo teaches you grit. You get thrown, you get back up – even if getting back up looks different. My life didn’t end in that arena it just took a turn I never saw coming.
I had to relearn everything like how to sit upright, how to feed myself and use adaptive equipment.
“I built a new version of my life.”
I wanted the flexibility of having my own Support Workers who actually suited my needs and learned our routines. It makes such a difference compared to having any joe blow turning up at your home.
Look at the videos below to learn more about John and how his positive experiences with receiving support.
Hi, I’m Allison. I’m John’s mom. John was um a total aggie guy, right into rodeos and totally loved bull riding and all things country before his accident, and not a lot has changed.
He’s still into all of those things and um just in a different capacity since his accident, but he’s still mad on bull riding, watching and ute shows and runs his own ute show.
Living My Way has been excellent for us. Um, it’s not how we first started when John came home, but we soon learned the flexibility we could have with, like, employing carers that we knew.
Some of John’s friends were, you know, doing similar work and um, we could actually employ them and we were in charge of who we could employ, rather than just have another company send whoever they thought.
So, it was really important to get that right fit and it’s just continued and that’s why we’re still with them today.
John and Allison share their story (video)
My name is John Cassie. I’m 31. I live in Bathurst, New South Wales. And I’m an EYO member for Living My Way.
I grew up in Orange. I moved away briefly working up north and then I come back.
Rodeo was obviously quite a big one with bull riding. Um I used to attend a lot of ute shows with my ute and then yeah, just being out on the farm doing farm stuff. And yeah, goes quite well for a V8. It’s very loud and yeah, bit of fun to drive.
In 2012, I had a bull do a back flip in the shoot on top of me at a rodeo up in Orange. Subsequently crashed underneath and ended up with a C4-5 spinal injury. You know, when I was in hospital recovering, I didn’t really know what to expect.
Once I got out of hospital, the social workers gave me rough ideas of what could be done. We were very lucky with accessibility. Um we found this house that was quite set up, suitable for the wheelchair. With the NDIS, um obviously there was appointments, suppliers, um support workers. Being regional, it’s a lot harder to find support workers that are wanting to do the job.
We discovered uh Living My Way in a spinal related magazine to be able to have the flexibility of them carers coming in to know your routine, to know what works best for you. They help us find the right care workers that are going to be the right fit.
Meet John (video)
