March is Traumatic Brain Injury Month

Before and After

When we speak of Traumatic Brain Injuries there is always a Before and After, this can be used in many random sentences.  Having a Head Injury changes Everthing.

Before My TBI: I Was and Could:

• I could walk.
• I could talk.
• I could eat with no help.
• I had the energy and coordination to climb trees and leap fences in a single motion.
• I was Captain of every Sports team.
• I was invited to my friends house to spend the night and play.
• I could read a book in a very short amount of time.
• I loved to read.
• I could stay up most of the night waiting for Santa, wake early and be extremely excited and still have a great day.
• I could ride a bicycle with grace and speed.
• I could play a flute, or was just learning. I had played a duet in elementary school.
• I could write my name.
• I could talk so much that everyone would tell me to shut up, and then I would talk out loud whining about how I couldn’t talk and get told to shut up again. I love this one.
• I was great at every sport I tried.
• I was a good student making very good grades.
• I was popular and had alot of friends.
• I had a good sense of humor.
• I had a family that loved and cared about me and seemed always very happy.
• My brothers rough housed with me and would play and joke with me.

After my TBI this is a list of things that became the new normal:

• I couldn’t walk, talk at all at first then later it came slow, write, feed myself, dress myself, go to the bathroom alone, walk up the stairs, or run.
• I slept a lot.
• My friends came over but we didn’t really play anymore they talked to me, I struggled to talk back.
• I spoke like John Wayne, very delayed and slow, “Let’s head em’ off at the pass.” became my impression of him.
• I rode a three-wheel bike around the house and didn’t go outside a lot for a while. But if I was outside I was on the Kratz Mobile.
• I had seizures, many if I got excited or not. There was no telling when I would have them I would go down so quickly you couldn’t catch me.
• Christmas was a time of joy but I usually had a seizure. I got a Charlie McCarthy doll that scared me and I seized. I am just chuckling as I write this. The damn thing scared the hell out of me.
• My brothers didn’t hang out at the house very much after I was injured.
• There were people there a lot family and friends. They brought gifts, helped with me, and did wonderful things for us. We could never thank them all, but I try everyday by just being the best I can be.
• I didn’t go to school for almost the whole year.
• My friends’ parents didn’t want me over for fear I would seize. They had legitimate concerns; my seizures were brutal.
• We stopped going to the ocean or the bay.
• My friends soon changed as the moved on a grade and we didn’t have the same things in common any more. I made new friends and am fortunate to now have the same old friends.
• I didn’t read as much, in fact it was difficult to concentrate, that is sometimes still true.
• We started locking our doors.
• Everyone in town watched everything we did and for good reason.
•  There were no tears, we didn’t talk about it, and life got better over time, for some of us for others things never were resolved, and may never be.
• I had to have a bed rail on my bed so I wouldn’t fall out if I seized and I spent a lot of time watching TV and listening to music, because I couldn’t draw, or play games easily, or read as well.
• I went to visit a school for kids with handicaps and never went back.
• I went to the hospital for injuries more and went to Physical Therapy 3 times a week for more than a year.
• A District Attorney came to my home; I had to look at pictures to identify the man who beat me. I then had to go to court in 1975. I was a witness in my own trial he’s still in jail.
• I didn’t walk to school for a very long time.
• I had three 4th grade teachers
• Some kids at school locked me the bathroom, taunting me the same school year when I got back in March or April; they told me were going to beat me up. After that, I could not be alone in the halls.
• I still had a sense of humor and told jokes and NO ONE EVER told me to Be Quiet EVER AGAIN!!!!

TBI’s and Violence are life altering, for everyone that surrounds you. Again, I could say so many more things. These happen to stick out in my mind the most tonight.   </p