Where Did My Brain Go? A Traumatic Brain Injury Memoir
One broken red light. One pickup truck. My life shattered in 1986.
I watched the Ford logo grow larger. Time stopped. No escape. The impact folded Tommy's 1963 Valiant like an accordion and snapped my knee backward until my toes touched my thigh. The steering wheel shattered my jaw and loosened my teeth. I woke from a five-day coma with a ruptured diaphragm and a dozen metal staples in my chest pulling in a dozen different directions.
A note in my intensive care chart read: "Patient is confused. Someone should check his head."
My doctor wife read that chart. She signed me out of two hospitals before anyone examined me, because she didn't want a brain-injured husband. She wanted a software developer to help her retire in a few years. I was the babysitter.
For nine years, I had no idea my brain was damaged.
I found letters to strangers I didn't recognize. Friends laughed when I asked if I seemed different. I got drunk to stop wondering what was wrong with me. A worried friend finally asked the question that changed everything: "Have you ever hit your head?"
Other brain injury memoirs feature helicopter evacuations, loving families, and treatment teams. Mine features an angry wife, Dr. Feelgood, and vodka.
One exceptional surgeon gave me back my ability to walk. One dedicated social worker helped me escape the disability trap. But most professionals wanted to keep me drugged and profitable. Cheerful psychiatrists prescribed pills that made me stare at screens. A charming employment counselor encouraged me to work on a factory assembly line with her other disabled clients. Slick salespeople described the joys of supervised housing and "clubhouse" parties.
I said no. I relinquished my disability benefits.
"I want to walk without a limp," I told Dr. Allman. He became serious instantly. He performed my knee surgery and provided unlimited physical therapy without requiring health insurance. For over a year, I drove through Atlanta traffic with one useless leg to do physical therapy five days a week. No insurance company today would approve that. But it's why I can walk.
This is what recovery looks like when nobody's helping. When you're screaming in your sleep and drinking to forget what you can't remember. When your doctor wife watches you struggle and does nothing. When the system wants you dependent and you choose freedom instead.
Where Did My Brain Go? is proof that you can reclaim your life, even when you're doing it alone.
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