Living with Traumatic Brain Injury

Oct 11,2004 was a normal work day until half way thru my shift and that’s when I took the fall that changed my life. I tripped and smashed my head on the very cold cement. I don’t remember a lot because like many people who experience a head injury I blacked out long enough to remember someone helping me up and hearing voices saying are you ok?
I picked up the pieces of my glasses and felt the dizziness as the room spun around.
So much has changed for me since that day and I could never write it all here. There are some bad things, like the fact that I live with constant migraine cluster headaches and I have some issues with my memory and retention but I worked with a group of folks that helped me to retrain the portions of my brain that were not functioning properly and they were wonderful.
I have always been a person that used writing as a means of therapy growing up and througout this process my writing has been the one constant.

Due to my brain injury I have had to work with a speech/language pathologist, an occupational therapist and a psychologist for just about two years. They have helped me deal with the brain injury and all that came with it. The mood swings and the personality changes, the relearning everything and safety stuff, etc, etc.

They even helped me go back to school and finish the classes I needed to get my associates degree. That is an Awesome thing for me. They have helped motivate me to keep writing and I have been able to get my first book of poetry published.

So brain injuries suck and there are a million lousy things you will experience but the positive that you get out of it will out weigh the negative by far.
I am one of those people who are always looking for a reason for things to happen. I want to know why? God, why? Everyone’s four year old, why? Why?
I got out of an emotionally draining relationship and I met five of the most wonderful people in this world that I would never have met, had it not been for this accident.

So would I do it again, smash my head and join the world of the tbi folks….probably not for pains sake, but I’d be lost without those heavenly people.
Sometimes the only way over something is to go thru it…and the only way thru it is to write it down…..so write your feelings and live your life the best way you can. I can’t get over my Brain Injury but I can write about it and I do in my poetry. I also try to remember:
A brain injury only slows us down a little, it doesn’t stop us!