Brain Injury Awareness Month- My Recovery

Let me continue on.  In the last post I shared how I fell off of a scooter (such a lame way to sustain such a badass wound), was rushed to the hospital and then luckily woke up with a full functioning physical body, even if my mental attributes were severely damaged.  I do not remember any of this.  After only 3 days in the ICU (much faster than any medical professional predicted), I was transferred to an inpatient rehabilitation facility to get intensive physical, occupational and speech therapy.  

My first memory after my accident is in the bathroom in rehab with a nurse helping me wash up.  I do not remember feeling uncomfortable with this lack of privacy, but only an intense focus on maintaining my balance and doing the job sufficiently.  It would not be an overstatement to say washing took all of my effort.

Every day while in rehab I woke up and had therapy for several hours.  In therapy I had to relearn how to walk and balance again, resharpen my cognitive abilities, and practice using my face since the left half was completely paralyzed.  It was HARD.  I can’t even exaggerate how hard it was.  Think about expecting and so badly wanting your body to do something it had always done and suddenly no longer could.  At the beginning I had such little short term memory loss that I would ask a question over and over again.  I can only imagine how difficult it was for my parents, who had lost their fiercely independent, driven, degree holding daughter to this girl who asked regularly what had happened to her and once tried to completely undress in front of them because she felt hot.  

I’d hit the left side of my brain and then in the impact my brain had bounced off the skull and hit the right side.  The left side, more affected, is the primary speech processing region, while the right side controls your emotions.  I’d damaged both. It was a blessing I was able to speak at all.  You know that feeling you get when a word is right off the tip of your tongue?  I experienced that frustration several times an hour in addition to my memory deficits.  My emotional intelligence was almost non-existent and I was unsustainably, irrationally ecstatic, probably in large part due to Percocet.  In fact, one of the big things I remember is how much I loved my new Rihanna haircut.  So cool.

It required such perseverance.  Of course, it was very difficult to think at the same level and in the same way as I had pre-injury.  Sometimes I felt like I was navigating a world in which I did not belong.  Every time I discovered another deficit in my abilities and was filled with self-doubt, I forced myself to try harder and longer with the goal of returning to my pre-injury abilities.  It was unacceptable and unthinkable to me that I would not achieve the goals I’d had pre-injury.  I’m so blessed with the resources I was offered.  My therapists took a special interest in me (I was undoubtedly the star patient) and never let their expectations falter.  Most importantly, my parents were there EVERY minute with me (the institute, realizing they weren’t going away, even provided them the other bed in my semi-private room).  They were there to help me to the bathroom because it would be faster than if I had to wait for a nurse.  They were there to take walks and play games with me, when I had the ability to do that. Just their presence made such a difference. I also had friends and a boyfriend to come visit me and see how I was doing, which made me feel very loved.  

After only 2.5 weeks in inpatient rehab I was released, much ahead of when doctors had predicted.  Outside of the structure of the hospital I found it much more difficult to deal with the injury’s effects.  I still needed to go to therapy three times a week and that took about an hour’s commute.  I was constantly exhausted, sleeping up to 16 hours a day.  Unable to drive or be independent at all, I was now living with my parents, which I hadn’t done since high school, and it was a huge frustration for me.  I had such high expectations for myself but was not always able to fulfill them.  For example, I wanted to get a job again but just going to the grocery store felt like too much pressure because I felt so anxious when requested to find an item.  How am I supposed to know what aisle it is on!?  How am I supposed to scan the shelves to find it?! Too much information! Embarrassing to struggle! Ugh!

I had decided my diagnosis was completely irrelevant to my life and to ignore what people expect me to accomplish and do whatever I am driven toward. By now, I was off the Percocet and my partial face paralysis did not seem like a weird little fluke anymore.  I wanted it to start moving again!  I was tired of feeling ugly or being treated differently or people not quite reading my emotions (although in their defense I didn’t really grasp my own tumultuous emotions either).  And I was angry at myself because I’d never even thought to appreciate the ability to smile until it was taken away from me.  So much anger and frustration.  For a while my phone was deactivated and my days consisted of sitting at home, watching TV, wishing someone would call me and scouring Facebook.  On Facebook I found people getting promotions or first jobs, spending time with friends and…smiling.  I wanted to feel successful again.

Literally pouting on the floor

Practicing taking pictures where I could find my face acceptably attractive

When I would share my frustration and jealousy, people would often tell me it is just a interruption in my soon-to-be successful life.  That I have extenuating circumstances and I really can’t compare my life to that of others. I would deny this outright and explain that it’d had already been ____ months without any improvement in my life mobility.  And they would rightly point out that I’d shown a lot of improvement overall.  Finally I decided it was time to delete my account.  Hindsight is 2020 and they were right, it was not fair to compare my story and situation to anyone else’s.

One day Justin shared this little passage with me:

If the cocoon fits, wear it- sometimes our lives contract before they expand.  Like a caterpillar that confines itself to a tiny cocoon before it grows wings and flies, we may be experiencing the darkness before the dawn.

It was like a new dawn had come!  This was exactly what I needed to hear.  I had read Senator Gabrielle Giffords’ book (the congresswoman shot in the head) and had finally been able to express what I’d been embodying that last several months: “Perseverance conquers all”.  This reminded me that just because I was out of rehab and the ‘hard’ part was over, more was still to come.

I cannot think of a more appropriate principle than perseverance and I have worked to embody that idea for others since the accident.  March 19 is my birthday.  I no longer take the day for granted.  I’m lucky to still be here and able to function similar to how I did two years ago.  We have very little time in our lives and we need to make the most of it.  Recovering so well from this forced me to re-evaluate my priorities and persist toward a greater sense of meaning and purpose in my life.  I was still on this Earth and intended, more than ever before, to persevere to make a difference in the lives of those with whom I interacted.  I thought back to what I really wanted to do.  I have always been fascinated by the world and planned since high school to live abroad.  It wasn’t until this incident that I started truly working toward that goal.  So now I ask of you, appreciate your birthdays and the people around you as much as I do mine.  Do not allow yourself to be complacent.  There will be struggles but if you want something badly enough it is worth the risk.  

Now I am in Rwanda doing something my childhood self could have only dreamed of.  Yes, my accident still affects me in ways that are often invisible to others.  But life is a verb.  Go out and pursue your dreams and don't let anything hold you back.  I am.