By Anusha Bradley of RNZ On a rainy winter night in Waikato, Jeremy Buxton wheels his barbecue into the garage to cook dinner under cover. He lights the grill then walks away. Minutes later, his wife Rhonda sees smoke seeping through a hole in the garage wall. She runs to the door to find the barbecue engulfed in flames. “How we didn’t lose the house that night is beyond me,” she says. It is not an isolated incident. “The number of times he’s just about burned the house down with cooking … the pots that I’ve had to throw out.” Buxton once drove 300km a day as a delivery driver, juggling up to 100 phone calls before dinner. Now, if he puts the jug on and someone knocks at the door, he forgets about the jug entirely. “I’ve no retention of short-term memory.” Nine years after a car crash left him with a traumatic brain injury, his speech still slurs. His hands tremble and he lives with constant brain fog and fatigue so crushing he rests for hours each day just to function. But Buxton says the hardest part has not only been living with his disabilities, but the long fight for recognition with the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC). The Buxtons are still battling ACC over how Jeremy’s injury is recorded; the grief of not getting the treatment he needed sooner; and the shock of learning the agency secretly watched him. He also believes the agency has breached his privacy dozens of times. “I’ve lost all trust,” he says. Jeremy and his wife Rhonda are now separated but remain close friends. Photo / RNZ, Cole Eastham-Farrelly The man he was Before the crash, Rhonda says, Buxton was “the most amazing, fun-loving person”. “He never argued. He was just laughing.” At home, they were a team. If Rhonda was vacuuming, he would grab the vacuum off her. If she was cooking, he would step in beside her. He wasn’t the kind of man who came home, opened a beer and sat in front of the television. “If you were up doing something, he was helping. If anything, he’d tell you to sit down.” He was the main caregiver to their son, Jayden, who was just 15 months old at the time of the crash. Now, Jeremy is “a completely different person”, says Rhonda. He is easily overwhelmed, noise can feel unbearable, his patience is thin. “He’s still a wonderful dad,” says Rhonda. “But it’s really hard.” The crash and the classification In September 2016, Buxton was on a delivery run when he crossed the centre line and hit an oncoming vehicle. He had to be cut from the wreckage and flown to Middlemore Hospital, where he was initially diagnosed with concussion and back and neck injuries. Over the following weeks, his symptoms escalated. He struggled to find words. His limbs went limp at times. He was dizzy, disoriented and exhausted. For months, he slept for up to 17 hours a day. Clinicians treating him described his condition as a moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injury, yet ACC documents recorded his injury as a “brain injury - other” or “mild traumatic brain injury”. The distinction matters. A mild traumatic brain injury is generally expected to resolve within weeks or months. Moderate to severe brain injuries can require long-term therapy, complex rehabilitation and ongoing support. Early access to the right treatment is critical, says Brain Injury Waikato community education and support officer Josiah Ploeg. “The research is really clear that the sooner treatment can be accessed for a traumatic brain injury, the better.” Delayed treatment can lengthen recovery and lead to problems with things like keeping in work, managing relationships and increased mental health challenges, says Ploeg. ACC’s classification meant Buxton was being sent to concussion programmes, despite warnings he needed much more help. The concussion trap A month after the crash, Jeremy’s physiotherapists emailed ACC urgently, warning he had “SIGNIFICANT issues” and needed more intensive management than they were funded to provide. “Our staff have strung along the best they can,” one w...