FOUR LADS, two guitars, one amplifier. It can get noisy in this house. Rob Norwood is down in his bedroom mangling a rock anthem on a bass guitar with a little help from his sound-distortion pedal. Ciaran Connell is singing loudly about the "wild rover" and the alehouse he used to frequent.

In the kitchen Chris O'Brien has his acoustic guitar out and he has been joined on vocals by Owen Griffin who appears to have brainwashed everyone else in the house into thinking James Blunt is the greatest songwriter since John Lennon.

But then Owen sings Goodbye My Loverand for a moment Blunt's lyrics seem almost, whisper it, profound. "I am a dreamer but when I wake/You can't break my spirit - it's my dreams you take/And as you move on, remember me/ Remember us and all we used to be."

Remember them and all they used to be. Kilkenny-born Rob was eight years old when he was knocked down by a car while running across the road after a game of hurling. Liverpool-mad Ciaran, a manager of a food factory in Portlaoise, was in Germany on a stag weekend five years ago when he was injured after an alleged assault. Chris, a plasterer by trade, fell off a roof trying to get into his Kilkenny flat - he had locked himself out - in 2001. Four years ago at the age of 20, Owen from Waterford, with his earrings and spiky hair and shiny future in a boyband, was asleep in the back of a car in Scotland when his life-changing road traffic accident happened. Two of the other passengers were killed.

All four men have varying levels of acquired brain injury (ABI) and live in shared accommodation in this Peter Bradley Foundation residence in Waterford city. Donegal man Peter was in a serious motorbike accident 28 years ago and his family, frustrated by the lack of specialised facilities for those with ABI, went on to establish the Peter Bradley Foundation. An estimated 10,000 people a year acquire a brain injury in Ireland but there is only one national rehabilitation hospital, with 110 beds to cater for those affected. The foundation now runs 14 HSE-funded residential homes across the country, where housemates - the majority of those with ABI are men between the ages of 16 and 35 - can live assisted yet, in many ways, independent lives.

Each brain injury is unique and so too are the challenges faced by those affected. Chris gets tired easily and needs to rest in the afternoons. Rob's balance was badly affected with the result that bouncers on nightclub doors have turned him away, mistakenly believing he was drunk. Ciaran, while he can sing lyrics with fluency, has a hard time speaking. And since his accident, Owen has suffered bouts of depression or mood swings.

THEY EACH LIVE with serious disability and yet they look, and sound, like any other four young men sharing a house, with all the slagging, rows over cleaning duties and personality clashes you'd expect. That's why, explains Mary Heffernan of the Peter Bradley Foundation, ABI is known as the "silent epidemic". In many cases the physical injuries heal well, but the hidden effects of the brain injury are less apparent.

The staff here, Gabrielle, Vicky, Keith and Robbie, work with the residents to set long and short-term goals. Ciaran's latest short-term goal is to try a pint of beer, something he hasn't done since sustaining his brain injury.

Chris would like to have a part-time job and a relationship with a woman.

Rob, an accomplished painter, rides horses and swims with the National Learning Network four days a week and is hoping he might form part of the Irish team for the next Special Olympics. Owen, a former member of boyband Idolize, has lost none of his showbiz ambition and wants the opportunity to perform his own songs to audiences.

The week after his accident, Idolize were due to support Westlife on their European tour, meet with Louis Walsh and sign a recording contract. "By now I would have been a multimillionaire," he says, with a smile that had things gone to plan could have set thousands of teenage hearts beating a little faster.

On top of the massive brain injury he sustained in the accident, Owen broke his jaw, neck, pelvis, shins and shoulder bone. He was in a coma for seven weeks. Nobody expected him to walk or talk again but in five months he was doing both.

"The accident changed me, though," he says. "I used to be very outgoing but I went really, really quiet. My personality changed, I went into myself." He laughs and says his uncle has nicknamed him "Tragedy" because he has had more than his fair share. His mother died when he was three, he was bullied at school, his father died from cancer just as he had made his physical recovery and since the accident he has spent time in psychiatric units because of a chemical imbalance in his brain.

"Coming to this house to live has been the best move I ever made in my life," he says. "I came into my own here, my personality started coming back. This is me, this is how I was before the accident. [ After the accident] I couldn't say two words to anybody. I have my confidence back now, living here."

For Ciaran, who was placed in a nursing home for older people after his injury, the house has been crucial in his ongoing rehabilitation.

He has his own room, with a poster of Liverpool's Stephen Gerrard on the wall, where he can play his Red Hot Chili Peppers and REM CDs as loud as he likes and join the others for sing-songs around the kitchen table. Staff say his communication skills have improved since coming here and that, while the residents in the nursing home loved his company, it was not appropriate accommodation. Unfortunately, due to the lack of facilities, it's where many of those with ABI can end up.

WITH ABI, explains Mary Heffernan, there can often be a grieving for the life that might have been had the injury not happened and resentment towards the altered course that life has taken. Rob used to get angry.

"I'd be cursing and getting angry all the time. I don't mind, now," he says. "You can't live with the anger, you have to let it go".

He sees his family every weekend and loves talking about his niece and nephew Molly and James - all the housemates are in close contact with their relatives. Rob says he would quite like a job to have more money for computer games. "My dad says if I was you now Rob I wouldn't work at all because you don't have to. I understand what he means but it would be nice to work and get extra money," he says. His party piece is the song Jumbo Breakfast Roll, the eulogy to that Irish breakfast staple, which he sings word-perfect, to the amusement of his housemates.

Chris has no memory of the fall from the roof, but is clear about what his life was like before his accident.

"My life wasn't like this," he says. "I was into taking drugs and alcohol and that's being honest with you. I used to take a lot of ecstasy and speed and magic mushrooms and LSD and I was smoking a lot of hash. That's why I was in that flat where I had the fall: because I had been smoking hash out of the bedroom window at home and my father said 'you have to go, I can't bring up the other kids with you smoking that dirt'."

Chris's brain injury was "a wake-up call" and he insists he is grateful that he had the accident. "My attitude towards life is totally different. I am sober every day, aware of what is going on around me. I didn't care about my life before; this place gave me a life," he explains.

What about people who think that because of a brain injury your life is . . . "Over?" says Chris finishing the sentence for you. "Nah, it's not. It was a bit hard to try and get used to it, you are not like a normal person, but with the drugs I wasn't like a normal person before anyway. I thank God I had the accident. It made me wake up and realise I was pissing my life down the toilet, damaging my body, messing up my brain. It makes you appreciate life more. I appreciate everything more since the accident. I appreciate having this house. I appreciate Gabrielle," he says pointing at the dark-haired, twinkly-eyed staff member who he says always knows when he is feeling down.

"You can't hide anything from her, she susses you out and makes you feel better. She should get a raise, if I had my way she'd be on €3,000 a week."

CHRIS SAYS THE things he appreciates are "being normal, doing normal things, like going to the gym. It's not true that your life is over when you have a brain injury; it makes you appreciate what you've got. In a way," he adds, "you have more not less after the accident." In what way? He thinks for a moment. "People understand you more," he says.

"And maybe you understand yourself more too."

Owen is equally philosophical about his accident and while he is still coming to terms with the direction his life has taken, there is acceptance too. A tattoo on his arm reads "yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift". And it might be the motto for the lives lived in this house.

"I am glad it happened to me, really glad," he says. "Although I always loved and cared for people, there were times when I used to be so selfish. I care for people now much more than I used to. Another thing is that when I had the accident I was told the power of my brain was reduced to a three-year-old's. I've gone from that to becoming wiser than an 80-year-old because of everything I've been through."

His wisdom, and the insights of others with ABI, can be found in Thinking Past Yourself, a Peter Bradley Foundation poetry book inspired by Owen. He wanted to show people that there was life after brain injury. "I always wrote poetry, even before the accident, it's the best way to express yourself," he says.

"I was thinking the book might show people - parents, husbands, wives, sisters, brothers or people with brain injuries - that there is hope after something like this happens. Life changes but it doesn't have to stop."

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beingthere@irish-times.ie