Introduction
My book is about brain injury. But it is also about people, and how they deal with life. Howe we come to realize that the power to recover lies deep within each of us. We have only to realize it and call upon that strength to heal ourselves. Sustaining a brain injury leaves a person different than before, and coming to grips with the process of “becoming a person that you like” again, is a long and arduous process.
Acquired brain injury or (ABI) occurs every 15 seconds to someone in the United States of America. It hits fast, like a tsunami, and leaves lifelong devastation in its wake. Acquired brain injury changes you instantly. Injuries can be termed mild, moderate or severe, but the one thing I have learned is that recovery is long, hard and heart-wrenching in all three cases. I have lived with the remnants of brain injury and fought hard against the tides of sympathy and apathy. I know I could not endure another injury, so I take the necessary precautions now. Buckling seat belts, wearing helmets, and promoting awareness have become a part of my life. Maybe we need to have that tidal wave hit us head on before we listen and learn. I certainly hope that is not true.
….Healing takes place form the inside out. Healing involve the struggle to rebuild relationships with family, friends, and colleagues, Healing is recognizing the grieving process and coming to grips with our remaining strengths, asking for accommodation, using strategies, compensating for weaknesses, and believing in ourselves.
There are many aspects of sustaining a brain injury. When you have been the one to undergo the discrimination, the insults, the hardships, the stares, the lack of understanding, the losses, then you might begin to realize the complexity of brain injury from our perspective.
….But we are changed after brain injury, and learning to live with a new “self" is, often very frustrating and exhausting, Effects quickly spread to those nearby. Some people refer to these effects as ripples. They are not ripples. They are full-blown waves that hit the family head on, and smother them with immediate and long-term problems.
….These same waves overwhelm friends and, in many cases, carry them off. They isolate the survivors, and eventually lead to bewilderment and a very questioning of their own worth. If survivors are lucky enough to have a job and be able to go back to work, these waves often alienate colleagues, leaving the survivor ineffective and vulnerable and not understanding why.
Learning to return to work is a long, complicated process that needs genuine caring and nurturing. The sequelae of brain injury keep washing away the castles that one struggles to build in the remaining sand. Survivors are left in an undertow that is always there with the outgoing tide. An undertow that is constantly pulling the survivors and their families under, and deluging them with problems that seem to have no solution. I t is with these waves that this book concerns itself and tries to offer help, understanding and encouragement.
…With my vast cognitive deficits, I sometimes fell that I have wandered among the Alzheimers’ ward as a patient, and somehow, have been privileged to return to a world they can’t. That makes me feel very special, often as thought there is a reason for my experience. We all search for reasons, to make experiences meaningful. I hope all who read this come to know the important of trying to look at the work through the perspective of those who have lived it, and try to see it through their eyes.
My first book IN SEARCH OF WINGS, tells of my struggles thought the early rehabilitative experience, so I won’t dwell on that part of the journey here. One part affects the other, so we sometimes need to go hack there, in order to understand the present. This story begins in a new place, further on in my journey, beyond the curing. I begins at the “healing way”, a wall where we begin to discover ourselves again, find an inner worth to guide us, live each day for all its worth, and begin to realize that there are no limits to the human potential. There never were.
