Survivor Stories: Gallery

The analogy I use to describe suffering my Traumatic Brain Injury is that it’s like I was at the poker table and the dealer shuffled my deck and before dealing me a new hand, he removed all the Aces and most of the face cards. The analogy the neurologist used was not so delicate. He said what happened to my brain was like going through the windshield of a car.

In early May 2005, I had a sinus infection. I worked as a bartender, which meant I had plenty of contact with all the nasty germs brought in to the restaurant. At least a couple of those germs were bacterial meningitis and infected sinuses are pay dirt for bacterial meningitis. The disease scampered into my skull and caused the formation of abscesses on my brain while I suffered a series of mini-strokes. Along with causing several cognitive dysfunctions like considerable short-term memory loss and deficits in information processing, the trauma also left me with a wicked stutter and damage to the optic nerve in my left eye, which left me partially blind. I underwent a craniotomy to remove the abscesses before my skull was stapled shut again and my family and I engaged in a waiting game to see how much brain damage I would live with or the rest of my life.

Less than a month before I got sick, I had been a full-time reporter for The Reader newsweekly in Omaha. I was engaged to be married. I rented a house with my fiancé that we shared with our two dogs. By the time the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve that year, I worked 10 hours a week doing menial labor between trips to the rehabilitation facility, Quality Living Inc., trips to the 13 doctors involved with my recovery, walking my dog and sleeping. After my engagement dissolved, I moved into a 1 ½ room apartment and was waist-deep in drug and alcohol addiction that would last 8 more years.

After another failed relationship with another alcoholic that left me homeless, I faced two options: substance abuse treatment or life on the streets. In my moment of clarity, I opted for treatment and have been sober for 5 ½ years. My stutter has largely stopped, due to relearning how to speak. I compensated for the memory loss by always keeping a pocket notebook handy until the smartphone Notes app came along, though I still leave myself written notes all the time. Along the way I developed a passion for working with animals which progressed to online veterinary courses and a job as a veterinary assistant. After all this time, I have a found a calling I like, a partner I adore and other sober friends and it often seems like that medical affliction that swallowed my life 13 years ago happened to a completely different person. I recently started getting involved with the Brain Injury Alliance. I’ve been going to TBI support group meetings and I will be trying to persuade other TBI survivors to tell their story at the state-wide Brain Injury Alliance Conference March. In doing so, I hope to encourage TBI survivors to get involved in their own recovery through the various avenues offered at the conference and through the BIA-NE.