My 1998 Ford F-150 in 2003, the year before my second TBI. Banner photo: The park bench I built to replace the dilapidated one in our side yard.

Traumatic Brain Injury Two

Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) are not advised, a simple statement, and very true. I'm not talking to you as a neurologist, but as a twice over sufferer. Please, by all means, protect your head! Don't do crazy things and for God's sake wear a helmet if required by law, by work, if you have objects that hang over your head. I guarantee you, you don't want to go through what I did, period, because once something is lost it may never be recovered, and that includes your brains faculties. TBI injuries caused by accidents are not always visible, unlike those caused by strokes, they are often hidden and unseen. I won't go into the second accident itself, but I will tell you what my wife AP pled to the neurologist in his exam room, "I want my husband back! Beside you sits a brilliant man, now look at what he has been reduced to." She was mainly talking about the hundreds of seizures a day I had, my lost mental skills, the loss of my organizational skills, and the change in personality. That man she married was gone, and I couldn't remember him. I could remember the things and events of our marriage, but not the personality. It was erased in a single blow to the head, and the funny thing about that is that it wasn't all that bad of a blow. Sure it hurt like hell, and it left a mark but no broken skull bones like before. About ten minutes later I'd shook it off, and returned to work. The big problem I discovered was that as you recover from a TBI you had to build new neuro-pathways in your brain, and these new pathways, no matter how old they are, are only temporary, a patch. What the fuck! Bang your head once, don't bang your head twice; simple rule, except when I had that first TBI, in 1971, they didn't understand that completely and thought your brain was healed.

The brain wasn't repaired, it was patched up, like slapping on retreads on tires, and the patch-up work was only so good, and add another trauma to your brain severe enough, and in this case a hard knock, and all bets are off. I reported the accident and went back to work. A few weeks later I noticed things are wrong; I couldn't count to nineteen, not the numerals one to nineteen, but the actual objects, weird. I couldn't learn tasks and remember them the next day, like it was erased overnight, and worse, I was missing time, chunks of it. I drove on a no access interstate and suddenly I came upon a car that wasn't there a second before. It was like something from a sci-fi story, poof out of nowhere. It was there, and I slammed on the brakes. I told my boss and I called my last neurologist. He'd retired, and they assigned me another neurologist on the staff. It was thirty days before I could see her, and I kept working. I went to work and couldn't remember the procedures, and I'd had to relearn everything each day. I remember people and events, but it was like my organizational skills were all gone. I was one who wrote procedures at work. I was the go to guy; now I was fighting each day to stay afloat. I stood in the middle of the floor and just stared. I throw my clothes in the trash, and wonder whose they were, only to pick them up and find out they are mine.

Finally, the day came to see my new neurologist, and she put be through two EEG tests, one regular and the other sleep-deprived. I had not expected to miss too much work. I just figured it was something easy to solve, but I'll not worked in industry, and I'll not drive after what she'd show me. She said, "I want to show you something. I walked to her computer lab and she sat me down next to her, and showed me my brainwaves. She said, "See these spikes. They are many of them spaced evenly across, and they're called spikes and are called abnormal brainwaves." I didn't take it all in. "Each of these spikes can lead to a seizure, I don't want you to drive or work with heavy equipment." This was not good news, I can't work. "I will start you on a medication and see what happens."

This was what happened to me, because I had developed seizures, and I was now considered an epileptic. The neurologist was a neurosurgeon and not a general neurologist, she was one who thought first, where is the part of the brain I can remove to stop them. I was sent to have a MRI but there are no lesions or tumors to remove, as this is the case with most epileptics. She tries one medication and when it didn't work she throws up her hands. My wife was not impressed, and we decided to fire her. I tell my general practitioner I needed a good neurologist and he sent me into see my life saver, and I will keep him until he runs out of options, as he is a MS doctor and had only so many tricks up his sleeve, but he is a diagnostician, and he diagnosed me with both temporal and frontal lobe seizures; they are both partial seizures and many other forms that the temporal lobe controls. In other words, I had the whole spectrum of seizures.

The first medicine given to me by the neurosurgeon caused me to lose all my sense of taste. AP was a great chef and now I couldn't taste her food; she was depressed, and in denial. She refused to acknowledge my seizures. Even when I had one in front of her, it was too much. Not only had she lost my personality, she had to deal with a disability beyond her scope of comprehension. We watched a case about a TBI sufferer in England, and all he had was a bump on his head from a light car accident. He too had a complete personality change. She learned that the average duration of a marriage after a TBI with a personality change was three years. She became over protective, and she was fearful of every step I took, and I was smothered. I tried to go to my daughter Alicia's play, and I nearly died driving there, another vehicle out of nowhere. I never drive again, but my daughters didn't understand why I didn't drive to see them, they just interpret it as I didn't want to see them, and Beth didn't bring them to see me often; neither the kids nor Beth can see my disability, and it didn't register. Three years to the date when AP and I separated, I couldn't take the over protectiveness, and it was over. I didn't seek a divorce. I want to be in the city because I've won a full scholarship to attend the University of Missouri to major in art, and since I can't drive and we live ten miles away in a forest, I moved to town where I can catch the bus. There are other causes, a ton of them I will get to, as how our marriage ended, I can't work, and I was getting divorced. I became depressed after she filed for divorce, and I couldn't handle the stress, and I returned the scholarship so someone else who is worthy could use it.

Outside: this photo was taken of the front yard from the sunroom, on the southwest side of our house, in Mark Twain Forest. The prospective of the view is to look northwest.