A young Queensland teenage has defied the odds, surviving a catastrophic brain bleed that left him with a one per cent chance of survival.
Joshua Ditchmen, 18, from Wishart, was riding a quad bike at a friend’s place in Buaraba in the Western Downs region in 2023, when he suffered a massive stroke and fell off the bike.
Even though paramedics responded quickly, airlifting him to Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane, doctors still gave Joshua a one per cent chance of survival.
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His distraught parents, Michael and Sonja, prepared for the worse as police and social workers told them to say their goodbyes.
However, despite all the odds being stacked against him, Joshua because to show signs of improvement.
“Josh is a fighter,” Sonja said.
“He’s so determined.”
His improvements continued, with Joshua spending months relearning how to speak with a speech pathologist.
And while his mates were running around the Carina footy oval on a Thursday night, Joshua was learning how to put one foot in front of the other.
Almost two years after Josh’s stroke, simple things still take more concentration, effort and time.
Every morning, when he looks in the mirror, Joshua Ditchmen sees two young men staring back.
Navigating life with double vision is just one of the challenges he now lives with—but Joshua knows just how lucky he is to be alive.
“I like to talk a bit slower now, because sometimes I lose a word, they can sometimes take me a little longer to find,” he said.
“I can get a bit stuck. But when I see myself in the mirror, I say to myself: ‘it’s up to you, Joshua, to make your story a good one’.”
Joshua still has an awkward, numb feeling that runs down his left arm and leg, but that hasn’t stopped him from training for a 21km half-marathon.
“The universe, God, or whatever you believe in has given me a second chance at life, and I don’t want to waste it feeling sorry for myself,” he said.
“I love moving forward, growing and getting better.”
Joshua has even started at Toastmasters, learning the art of public speaking, and wants to share his story with young people.
He said he hopes to help dig other teenagers out of the depths of depression, and that he doesn’t waste time thinking what his life would have been like without the stroke.
“The way I look at it is that the accident gave me two doors to go through – one of the doors is positive and one of the doors is negative, and I’m choosing to go through the positive door,” Joshua said.
“I want to go and help as many people as I can to have a positive mindset. Even if I am able to help just one person, it wouldn’t be a wasted effort.”
Joshua was offered the chance to expressed his deep gratitude to the crew that saved him at the Brisbane LifeFlight base earlier this week.
“Meeting those people who saved Josh was beautiful for us,” Sonja said.
“That was closure.”
LifeFlight’s free emergency trauma training workshops, First Minutes Matter, is coming to Mount Tyson State School on April 29, and equips participants with practical skills for time-critical medical situations like strokes.
