I always believed the TBI incurred in a MVA, on 18 Aug 1964, age 7, was of no significance.  For all I knew I was dx'd with a depressed skull fx, survived, didn't need to be institutionalized (as I understand my parents were advised), and told I was feeling sorry for myself when I blamed the car accident for my problems.  Mother Helen Matthews, the school principal of the elementary-jr. high parochial school I attended, advised my parents not to keep me behind a grade, and strongly encouraged them to see how I progressed once I began the Second Grade in November '64 before making drastic decisions regarding my intellectual abilities.  Never mind my emotional state of mind.

Today I came across this website.  Wow--a TBI survivors' site for people to contribute their stories!  I've pretty much stayed away from sites for survivors of mental illness, as I believe having survived all that I've had to survive is not a portal for my tales of woe.  I know all about depression and anxiety--all I care to know as somehow providing a hx of a TBI to a psych worker is meaningless.  Somehow it all goes back to feeling sorry for myself--a piece of residual activity I've been accused of doing to obtain attention.  So I survived, in a world that does not accept TBI beyond people who have had to be institutionalized--and who knows about that population?

I was never left back--in fact I saw myself as a person who had every right, and responsibility, to compete with everyone else.  And if I didn't, I was feeling sorry for myself.

Perhaps that is how I survived as I have--by focusing on what could have happened but didn't.  I graduated high school at age 17, thrilled to have been accepted at Virginia Commonwealth University for pre-occupational therapy.  I never needed OT following the head injury thing, so I was going forward with my life to eventually help others less fortunate than myself. 

This plan did not materialize as planned.  Today I am 51 yo, permanently disabled, and once again trying to fight against another infection.  And always, always, always, trying to figure out how I am going to survive.

My beloved father, who survived my mother by ten years, died four years and four months ago to this date.  He had told me my mother told him shortly after the TBI that my personality changed.  Gee, that would've helped me to understand why my inability to control my easy tendency to cry--an example of feeling sorry for myself--had its roots, maybe, after surviving a subdural hematoma.  (I obtained a copy of the operative report, probably stimulated by working as a medical secretary at Penn's medical school, dept. of neuropathology.  Accordingly I sustained a subdural hematoma in the left parietal lobe--the area of the brain responsible for speech and ambulation.  I had been comatose for a week prior to the procedure--the first week after the MVA, before undergoing a craniotomy.  I love including that piece of info in discussion of my past medical hx with health providers--sometimes it picks up ears, other times I learn it was not included in my history.  I want to scream, "wanna see the scar, my badge of survival?"  But, it is what it is.)

While achieving milestones throughout my life, I saw myself as a failure, on the inside, but a normal person on the outside.  On the outside, I did graduate college, nine years ago--and certainly no easy accomplishment.  I developed rheumatoid arthritis at age 33, along with osteoarthritis and fibromyalgia.  That year I was determined, without one tear, to finish at least a bachelor's degree in something, and the final year to complete this objective was 2000.  Just like the TBI, always invisible to the world, or at least in carefully covering the craniotomy scar with my hair, no one would know looking at me the physical agony I experienced 24/7/365, except when I had to use a cane to avoid falling.  Just a few years prior to being dx'd with arthritis and fibro (RA, at that time, was not a genetic disorder, and fibro was just emerging as an authentic dx beyond chronic muscle pain but hardly a disorder that doctors respected), I was the up and coming perfect legal secretary that head hunters loved.  I may have been impeccable in my self-worth and ability to do-it-all at the drop of a hat, and after knocking off 50 lbs dressed indescribably perfect, but I did cry, alot, and easily.  I was not allowed to believe I was really stressed-out in the pursuit of whatever happiness I was hoping to obtain.  Those high-impact aerobics I was knocking out to relieve the stress of my home life and employment life, apparently over-rode my tough ability to survive, to the point I was in agonizing pain, every moment of every day, as my life crumbled.

Some very mixed up priorities--as much as I wanted to be independent, as in moving out of the parental nest--took the back burner as I continued to care for my mother while my father forced himself to work until early retirement, dx'd w/ COPD.  For some bizarre reason, my father would not hear of it.  Ironically, my mother had been haunted, even after she died in 1995, by her parents and relatives for not continuing to be their caring daughter after my parents' marriage--a Polish tradition and American expectation.  I hung in the family rafters, caring for my father until he died in my arms, and then picking up the pace to assure my terminally ill brother died in the luxury of the family home--our place of birth.  Let me just say that developing septicemia a few months after I completed my familial responsibilities should have been, at the very least, a heroic end result of the hell I survived.  But apparently my surviving siblings saw it as just another suicidal attempt.

But graduation from Rutgers, pushing my GPA up to a nice 3.0, requiring nothing less than an A in every course I completed, in of all majors, English, was my claim to self-fame--in May 2000.  I had to disconnect my dream to legal clerical fame three years previously, but I'll never lower my expections, and perhaps that I why I am still disabled and unemployed.  But then again, if someone is going to hire me for my multi-administrative skills, I will no longer provide my wordsmith skills for free.  My ability to write, communicate, bring fresh ideas to the table, edit, compose, correct, articulate, pick up the slack, organize, resourcefulness, and above all--my innate artisitic and creative skills---they are not charge free, unless of course, as a volunteer. 

I respect authority, autonomy, and accountability. And would give my right arm to anyone, as my friends have told me I've done repeatedly in the past--but I do so behind a mask of self-doubt.  I never had the right to question the impact a subdural hematoma or TBI had on my life.  And, perhaps, it was just as well, except of course when I worry about my inability to find employment and continue to live an independent life.

Did a TBI and my or others expectations impede on the one aspect of a life I have yet to explore--love?  Who is going to love someone, over the age of 50, who has always unknowingly pushed others away?  Did my academic accomplishments, self-determination, and unselfish love for others become more of a challenge than I should have physically anticipated?

Oh well, I did what all I could, and more, to contribute to this world, and hope to continue in the same tradition.  Simultaneously, I am glad to learn that I am far from alone as a survivor of a TBI.

Sincerely,
Susan Wahl