I delineate the alternative rational that my TBI is in-fact categorized as critical (brink of death), due to personally experiencing a counselor who’s in my writing group from Bellingham, that bucked against my claimed severity, due to my # on the GCS. A quote from my psychiatrist: a specialty brain trauma MD, who worked alongside neurologists, in a hospital in Seattle for years, was appropriate & I didn’t hesitate to share it with her & the other writers in my writing group that witnessed her disbelief.
In her quote, my psychiatrist explained the professional reason that my TBI is classified as critical, which articulated the aforementioned reality: I had a variety of injuries, that, when incurred simultaneously & with the extreme severity that they were = it’s remarkable that I didn’t pass. AKA: I messed myself up REAL good! Well the car & the light pole did, technically…
The hell: the capabilities (all) that I’ve needed to regain, in there entirety, in the recent past (8.5 years ago – present) in order to live a full, independent, adult life (I feel incredibly fortunate to have this opportunity still! My reality could’ve been very different) is unbelievable to most. Other survivors & I deserve to recognized for the immense fortitude & continued perseverance that this seemingly endless recovery necessitates.
Nothing aggravates a survivor more than the self-claimed grandeur of their TBI being questioned. This overarching statement comes knowingly, due to me personally unintentionally offending a fellow survivor within my early recovery: The fellow survivor was jubilant as a result of massaging her scars consistently & for long enough, that they dissipated completely.
She didn’t offer me a reminder of this backstory & just showed me excitedly her lack of scars & clearly assumed that I’d remember her prior stated commitment, that she’d never have them surgically removed, when in fact my memory back then was awful ((far worse than now)))and this truth didn’t arise in my memory until many days later. I therefore asked her, innocently, if she’d had them surgically removed (as mine were far from gone). She responded very angrily & abruptly to my naive misassumptions/question: No! I didn’t have them surgically removed!!
At the time I didn’t understand why she took such offense. In my mind, at that time, she simply could’ve just responded with the reality. What was the big deal?
Now, years later, resulting from the offense I took from my claimed severity of TBI being discounted, I’m offered a full perspective (both as the offender & as the offended). Our situations are different, but I do see a commonality: Our tremendous healing efforts being grandly discounted by another, which I believe, is what angered us both.
Now, after receiving similarly false presumptions by others (there have been a few) & the perceived resulting dismissal of the tremendous work I’ve expended recovering, I’m enabled to understand how she felt (shoe on the other foot). The reality that I’ve lost an overwhelming # of friendships, as my psychiatrist foresaw (through experience, she knows that this reality is fairly unanimous amongst survivors). I’ve now altered my feelings from sorrow to opportunity, necessarily so.
Hope lies in my deep desire for a new home, with sun & fresh faces to base friendships on my present self. I’m not giving up on the present though! The true, old friends that I still have here in Seattle certainly deserve my attention & undoubtedly spending time with them will fuel my future too.
Sun is crucial for me now, to combat my lifelong depression, which has resulted from my TBI. (Hence my desired move south). I’ve begun to make a couple new friends here in Seattle, but the reality that people are fairly insular here (rarely strike up conversations w/ strangers), the aforementioned lack of sun, the priciness & largess of this city now, is very stifling for me.
Onward & up! The need to pick myself up & dust myself off, once again. That’s essential for goodness sake & it’s of the utmost importance that I keep my chin up while doing so! Good thing my motivation to address these numerous new challenges is continuing even after 8 & 1/2 years of recovery. Bellingham was a 1.5 year (brief, when considered in the context of my 8.5 year recovery thus far) break.
The good ol’ saying is quite appropriate here & now: “no rest for the weary.” Dictionary.com defines this as: “You must keep persevering no matter how tired or overworked you are.”