My Head Injury

This is the most intensely personal story I have ever written about my life, but its not a secret. I have been open about this in my real life because I think hope is a power thing. Its easier to say than write and have been crafting this post for about six months. Its hard to put all the details into a single post and for each incident I include I have ten more that I want to put in. Ultimately I did not know when I should or if I could ever post this but I think if I can talk about this in real life, I can do it online. I also thought that I would not leave my computer, waiting for comments and with being in Mexico for the weekend, there is no way I can look at e-mail until Monday.

I woke up on November 8, 1986, sixteen years old and a scoundrel. I wasn't a bad kid. I wasn't a good one either. I was the kind that like to get things started. I had popular friends, the smart ones in my high school class, because they I knew I could get them in just enough mischief that they could stay out of trouble and have a great story to tell their other smarty friends. I also had friends that were true trouble makers that did actually get themselves in trouble.

That night was a sleep over for a youth group I was in and some of us in the afternoon were getting food for the party. I volunteered because there was an election coming up for the head of the chapter and I wanted the title officially. At that point in my life I craved power and through reputation, fear and intimidation I was rising to the top in my region. I was the de facto leader for the same reasons the popular kids liked me, I could appeal to peoples base emotions, but these kids knew the other side of me too, the part that backed up the threats and taunts. I protected them from others by sticking up for them in back alleys and the dark hallways of organized meetings. I gained their respect by defending them from bullys. Probably the same kind of guy's I was capable of being except I was on their side.

But that afternoon I was in a car accident. A woman driving too fast slammed into the back of my friends car, of which I was in the back seat. When I came too, the cars had been pushed into a parking lot and some men were pulling with all their might to open the back doors. I am told that my mother driving behind us took us all to the ER and after looking at the large bump on the back of my head they gave me two tylenol for my headache, a free ice pack and a swift kick out the door.

Later that night at the sleep over I am told I was starting to act funny. I would be fine and normal and then pass out, waking up only after being slapped awake. I complained of headaches, severe ones. I left early and drove home.

When I woke up the next morning I didn't know who I was or where I was. My mom and brother took me to the hospital were I stayed for a while, unable to move because I had suddenly lost all feeling in my body and couldn't communicate with the doctors.

The first x-ray discovered that I had a massive whiplash. The vertebrae in my neck had been spun 180 degrees from normal. This also caused my trapezius to swell and gave me decreased blood flow and impulse to my body. I had become temporarily paralyzed. After several days and super high doses of demerol right into my neck I was able to regain control of my body.

The real damage was the closed head injury to my brain. Actually this was my second brain injury. My first was an open head injury I got in a backyard fight. To stop me, the other guy grabbed the first thing he could reach and then he drove it into the top of my head as hard as he could. Unfortunately for me he used a garden hoe which is essentially a solid rake and he split my skull wide open with it.

When the hospital finally scanned my brain after the car accident they saw that underneath the little bump they dismissed the day before was a massive concussion, contusions and multiple subdural hematomas, which were all causing acute brain bleeding and swelling. As it swelled up it put pressure on my skull and it wasn't going to give so the damage 'rolled' back and created more damage in my brain. This is why closed head injuries are more damaging than open head injury's, the trapped pressure can cause more long term problems.

As a result the left and right sides of my brain stopped communicating. I lost higher brain functions like the ability to read, write, type, walk, talk, remember how to tie my shoes, who I or my family was let alone my friends were. My voluntary and sensory information; the ability to learn and process, my long and short term memory, my ability to be an individual were all stripped away. Mentally and emotionally I suffered from a type of amnesia which is now called traumatic retrograde amnesia. (each word is helpful link)

It was explained that the body sought a way to relieve the pressure on the brain and it moved down my brain stem and through my spine but that was a mess from the whiplash. The blackouts I had the first night were just the beginning of many years of what turned out to be seizures my brain would have from all the electrical disconnect and pain it suffered. While new pathways were created between my brain thanks to therapists, it didn't help the actual brain heal any faster.

Of course the whole story I just related to you is all second hand. I still have no personal memory of my life from birth until about two months after the accident and its a mishmash for about another year. My entire childhood is an oral history like you would read about somebody elses life accomplishments in a museum.

I was never close to physical death but I felt I was given another life. I believe to this day that God had a plan for me and he gave me the shove I needed because I had closed myself off to his voice. He gave me a second chance and though I have made mistakes in the last twenty years, I have made amends to my former life and rebalanced my enternal soul ten-fold.

Its wasn't an easy road though. I had all kinds of people working on me; chiropractors, physical therapists, cognitive therapists, neurologists, psychologists. I was a mess. The M.D.'s told my parents that at best case I would be the mental and emotional level of a third grader and to be prepared to care for me the rest of their lives. Expectations were that I would be physically impaired from brain damage and I probably never talk or walk normal again. The head doc's wanted me commited because I was having some very serious psychotic issues and I did spend a very brief time 'under supervision'.

On the day of my accident I had a girlfriend. She dumped me. A former girlfriend whom I openly fought with and who was abusive to me, came to my aid with a change of heart. Lots of friends came to my aid teaching me basic skils and manners through my recovery process. After school these people would come to my house to stretch me out and take me for short teetering walks to the end of our cul-de-sace and back. Then I would go from one home to the other, each person teaching me another valuable lesson. One taught me to read, another to write, another manners and how to control myself. My mother was a Montessori teacher at the time and I was basically a new student to her. My brother had me watch my favorite movies over and over because I alway forgot that I had just watched them. I was taught to be kind and gentle and have compassion. Maybe that was from God, I don't know.

I had no short or long term memory for many months. In the beginning my short term memory was clocked at 1 second and my long term at 4 seconds. I began to function better but everything had to be written down. Some people wish an experience they had was put into a move. I think I got that in a Harrison Ford movie called Regarding Henry. Its almost too scary how well it captured my post injury experience and I can't get through it without great emotional distress. If you want to truly see what I went through relating to my family and my conversion from ass to affable after my accident watch it.

I learned to live by routine. Almost too much so. I could not drive anymore, I had forgot and the seizure didn't allow relearning for some time, so I took the bus to school. The bus would show up at 7:30am and it was a 1/4 mile straight down the street so I could remember that. I would show up at 7:20am. This meant I would get up at 6:30, shower, eat my toast and hot chocolate and slowly walk there.

Many times I would wake up, look at my clock and see it was half past then go through my routine. I would leave on time, walk to the bus stop and wait from 20 after till 45 after and walk home. I would go to my parents room, knock on their door and tell my mom the bus did not show up and would need a ride to school. She would then say to me, "Honey its 4 o' clock in the morning. Go sit in the kitchen I'll be right there." Sometimes this was earlier or later in the night.

I would not see the hours, just the minutes, because I was on a routine. I would not notice that it was pitch dark outside and that I was the only one standing on a corner for almost a half hour when a dozen kids should be there. It was frustrating, especially when I kept doing it over and over and over. One of me earlier memories is sitting in my parents bathroom crying uncontrollably because I was getting better but my mind still played this particularly cruel time trick on me.

For a long time mom would ask me to do something, a chore or move an object, and I would just stare at her blankly. She would ask if I understood her and I would say yes but my mind could not take the thought and make it an action. I knew she wanted me to, for example, move my shoes but thought stopped there. It would never occur to me to actually get up and move my shoes.

I had a brain scan that showed my brain waves were reversed. Brains do not have nerves so they feel no pain, but they know when they are overloaded. The seizures were my brains way of shutting itself off due to overload. I used to have seizures multiple times a day and then after about six years I was and am down to once or twice a year. This is some of the most intense pain I have ever felt. I can feel it come on and found that only complete sensory deprivation works. I put plugs in my ears, blind fold my eyes and lay in a half full tub of water for hours just so I can't hear or see anything.

I never lost my license to drive but I wasn't allowed to for a long time. The first time I was allowed to go by myself my parents proudly stood at the top of the stairs of the house watching me drive down to the bus stop and back, just a straight shot. I had a seizure, passed out and drove the car head on into a car parked on the other side of the street. Many months later I drove a friend home and had a seizure, I drove up into someones yard. I came to with her screaming hysterically. Usually the fastest way to get me out of a seizure was to slap my face. I think she was kicking my ass from the passenger seat. But she was one of the best friends I had through my recovery and I owe her a lot.

None of the teachers at school or students other than my friends really understood or cared about my new problem. I was now a Special Kid but had built a reputation for myself at the school and was treated as a fraud, or with apathy or was abused. Those that disliked me took great pleasure in pointing me in the wrong direction when I had lost my way in the halls, made fun of me for being slow and sometimes pummeling me. How wonderful that these are some of my first new memories.

My entire personality was altered. I went from being left handed to being right handed. I lost the ability to smell. I began to talk differently. Instead of a swagger I tripped over myself. Instead of a confident voice, I talked with my head down and with great pauses and I would forget what I was going to say or where I was going with a statement or sentence.

I became very susceptible to suggestion, a trait with head injury recipients. When this became known, a cruel joke was played on me at a high school party. It was on a house boat and someone who wanted to make fun of me, told me to jump in the lake. I did. I didn't know how to swim and had to be rescued. That was when people started to take my transformation seriously and all my excursions were monitored.

Sometimes it makes me very sad that my first memories are not playing with my parents at the beach or a birthday party or taking a family trip or even sitting in a class room. Its being made a complete fool of. Its being helpless, knowing I am helpless and falling for every stupid line that came my way.

When I started to get my life back together I was instructed to collect as much information about myself as I could from people. I was told truthful things about myself that my new personality found repulsive. I was told lies that I believed for many years and only through collaboration with true friends did I realize I was not the complete monster and degenerate I thought I was. In the end people were more happy with me the way I turned out than the way I was going and that was fine by me. I owe a lot of people for the person I am today.

I recovered so well from such a traumatic event and could verbalize my progression so I was put in a position to speak to families on behalf of victims which generally had a brain injury or aneurysm. I would simply tell this story to them and they would weep from the familiarity and the hope I gave them of a full recovery for their loved one. I gave them incite on what their loved one was going through and helped with the coping process.

I could also talk to the victims and be a voice of commonality to them. I still do it now and then. Many of us have similar challenges and I know that I very easily could today be a person of diminished capacity and walk with difficulty and need to wear a helmet in case I fell. My heart breaks when I encounter these people and it just brings to light how lucky I am. I often times refer to myself as the 'Mayor of Simpleton' because I don't feel any different than those that didn't recover like me, that I don't deserve to be as smart and physically strong as I am. That I was given a gift and even though I try my best I still don't know if I have earned it. When Tom Hanks uttered those words, "Earn this," in Saving Private Ryan, I thought he was talking to me directly.

Today it doesn't matter who I was before the accident. I don't like that person. Today I have no emotional connectivity to my youth. Over time I created a new family dynamic with my parents and brother. I am now living my forgotten childhood through my sons eyes. Mom says we are very much alike. Someday I will relate how I met Mistress post accident, but her brothers and especially her parents remember knew me pre-accident and they did everything possible to keep us apart. It took them years, literally a decade to begin to trust me.

I proved all the doctors wrong when I progressed from a third grade mentality to actually graduating (with help) from college. Today it would be hard to know I ever had to learn to read again. I learned to walk again, then run. I taught myself to swim at 22 and Mistress taught me to ride a bike at 29.

I joined the Army a couple years after the accident and wouldn't you know it, I had just enough smarts to make it into the infantry. It's not like they needed anyone smart, a score of 30 out of 120 got you in and I was told what to do every minute of my life. But I had learned to memorize really fast and every year I became more functional as a person and pretty soon I moved up through the ranks going to OCS and becoming an officer in the Infantry.

Over the course of six years I had a complete physical recovery from the accident. Mentally I had overcome a lot of obstacles. Emotionally and rationally I was still a traumitized person unable to communicate well with new people on a human level or engage in any type of relationship with women that didn't end badly. I was damaged goods. I kept pushing myself farther away from people until I ended up in Guam. Geographically and symbolically Guam is the middle of nowhere and yet I found that away from all distractions I could finally hear the voice in my head and over the course of one year vowed to become a hermit and lay the foundation for the rest of my life.

I did not drink. I did not date. I took a vow of celibacy, which was not difficult since I decided that I would not even talk to women unless I had to conduct business with them like at the bank or store. There was no women on my base. I pulled missions at work and on my free time I drove to an old abandoned Spanish fort, Fort Nuestra Senora de la Soledad, put my back against the building, looked at the ocean and for hours wrote in a journal about who I wanted to become politically, emotionally, financially, intellectually and spiritually. A few years and hundreds of hours later I came back to the states a much better person.

In the twenty years since my accident, I have carried 100 pound ruck sacks in triple canopy jungle, I have done running races and body building contests. I power lifted for a couple years and was also a decent rock climber. I finished an Ironman. Since the car accident I have had a dozen concussions, over half have knocked me unconscious. They say, more you have the easier they are to get. I can never participate in team athletics again, not even a pick up basketball game or touch football. Any serious hit to the head and it could be devastating. I have to call my wife when I hit my head in case something goes wrong a few hours later.

I still suffer from the head injury in other ways. Those that know me best, see the problems I have with conversation and speech; mostly that my mind will insert a completely different word into a sentence and when Mistress asks if I have seen her keys and I respond, "They're in the refrigerator, " she knows to ask again. I have a lot of pauses in my speech pattern because I can't think of the right word and know the one in my head is not right. It has taken me hours to write this post and most of my daily writings take a long time as well. Dictionary.com is always up to make sure I spell correctly. When I am tired and my mental guard is down I have a hard time driving or making decisions about simple things. I have impulse control issues and say and do things that I later wonder why I did it. I finish a lot of phone calls wondering why I said something the way I did.

I am a lucky guy. I am blessed. I don't deserve the gifts I have been given and try to use my experiences to help others with their own challenges. I wouldn't be able to write this entry if it wasn't for my mother and those friends I had who did so much for me in the beginning. Thats maybe why I try to be such a fervent friend. I have a wife who understands and knows me from before the accident and after it. She sees the confusion in my face caused by a mind that sometimes doesn't grasp a simple concept and helps me through it.

I know that there is something inside me that helped overcome my head injury. A supernatural power, a touch from God at that point in my life, a tenacity to never quit or give up in the face of adversity. Its more than optimism. I see optimism's in the faces of all those head injury victims who did not recover as successfully as I did. I see their open smiles and their distant eyes and hear a speech pattern that for a time was my own. I try to reach out to them and say, "Its okay man, I know what your going through, how can I help." But more often than not I just choke back my tears and try to treat them like a real person of value, accepted by society and full of the promise they had before their accident. Just like I want to be.