I can truthfully say that the last time I had a group of friends was in 2011. After reading that sentence you might think, that was five years ago, how have you not had friends since then? And the answer to that question tends to be because I have a traumatic brain injury. A traumatic brain injury can also be known as a TBI, and not too many people know what a TBI is. A TBI is a form of a brain injury that is caused by sudden damage to the brain. Approximately 2.5 million traumatic brain injuries occur in the United States per year, and on the day after Christmas in 2011, I became one of those statistics.
An incident caused me to hit my head very hard on a street road, and that is where my story begins. After my head contacted the gravel, my brain started to not only bleed severely but also swell. It seems impossible for your brain to swell at all, let alone swell to the size of your skull but that is what happened to me. At that moment, there were only two choices for me. The first choice was to get a craniotomy or leave my skull untouched and hope for the best.
A craniotomy is when a part of your skull is removed so that the brain is exposed, this is done so your brain can naturally swell. Keep in mind that I was not making these decisions for myself, but instead my life was being decided by my mother. The best option for me was the craniotomy, and about half of my skull was removed so that there was a better chance of me not ending up like a vegetable.
I ended up being in a coma and woke up with no idea of who I was, or what had happened to me. I did not understand why I was in a hospital with multiple IVs and tubes in my body, why I had to wear a helmet constantly, or why I had completely lost the ability to walk. Slowly but surely, my health did improve and I was told what had happened to me and what was going on. Days turned into weeks and then weeks turned into months. I sat in the hospital hoping that I could go home soon and get back to everything that I had once enjoyed.
After starting physical therapy to learn how to walk again, I realized that I was not walking fast like I used to. It seemed like something was wrong with my right leg, and I almost couldn’t walk normally. I later learned that it is a condition known as “Drop Foot,” which can be caused from being immobile for a long period of time. Having drop foot can cause your foot to slam and or collapse when walking. It began to sound like I was trying to stomp everywhere, and I had to take breaks often due to my ankle collapsing. Walking which is the easiest thing, became an almost impossible task.
Other than physical therapy, I had to meet with people to do brain exercises. These had the ability to show which parts of my brain were damaged or still intact. What hurt me the most was that some of the exercises were so simple, and now it was taking me more than ten minutes to process the question. I later learned that most my brain was damaged and that it would not improve over time. What was damaged, was damaged for good.
I was released from the hospital, and could not wait to get home and see all my friends. The tough part was that none of them wanted to hang out with me anymore. They said things such as: you are not fun like you used to be, we are nervous to be around you, you look funny with that helmet on. It was hard to hear any of these comments, I had been in the hospital for months, barely alive, and now I was an embarrassment to hang out with.
Even as the years have passed, I have met new people, but it is still the same situation. After hearing my story, friends are scared to take me out to do anything in case I get hurt, I am seen as boring because I can’t drink a lot, and I get tired too fast. Too all the people who have said these things to me or about me, I hope you know the severity of my accident and that the things I suffer with are normal effects from a traumatic brain injury.
Even though I can not do everything that a person my age is doing, I can still have fun. I can still go out, even though I might call it a night early because of me getting exhausted. I have a hard time being very active due to muscle weaknesses, but hey, I have walked multiple 5ks and still got a medal! You might have to repeat what you said more than once, but some people love when they can repeat their stories. If you have a good joke, you can get away with telling me the joke a few times. But hold off on asking me if I have a screw loose, I do have a little hardware in my head.
I suffer from a traumatic brain injury, and you can still be my friend.