Central Delaware Speech-Language Pathology Center (CDSLP)

The Unseen Effects of Brain Injury

This entry was taken from http://biade.wordpress.com/. For more information on Brain Injury please visit http://www.biade.org

You are standing in line at the checkout counter at your local grocery store.  There is a young lady in front of you, maybe 24 years old, attempting to count out change to the store clerk.  Someone sighs impatiently.  There is a long line of people behind you also glaring at the distraught girl.  She loses her place counting and, blushing, starts over.  She drops her handful of change.  A few people grunt in disgust and head for another line.  A man in the back of the line asks jokingly, “I wonder what high school she graduated from?”  The girl scrambles to pick her coins up.  “Can I help you so we can get these other people moving,” asks the clerk sharply.  The girl nods, smiling weakly.  She gives an embarrassed peek at the impatient faces staring at her as she hands her change to the clerk, who quickly counts out the coins.  The girl looks down; avoiding eye contact as she collects her bags and heads out the door.

What would your reaction be?

What if I told you that this girl was the survivor of an auto accident caused by a reckless driver?  What if I told you she sustained a head injury that left her in a coma for over 3 weeks?  What if I told you that over the course of 2 years she had to relearn how to speak, eat, walk, and dress herself?  What if I told you that her parents clap and pray over every small life success she achieves?  What if I told you she had already learned to speak 3 languages in her first few years of college?  What if I told you she recently learned her “team” decided that it is best she not return to college?  What if I told you she wakes every morning, cries, and then washes her face and commits to the challenge of a new day?  What if I told you her mother was waiting anxiously in the car, hoping to hear that her shopping trip went ok?  What if I told you the girl’s father had called three times during the girl’s 10 minute shopping trip to make sure all was ok?  What if I told you the girl put up her chin and resolved to come back to the grocery store tomorrow and try again.

What would your reaction be?

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) presents itself in many ways.  Survivors might be in a wheelchair, or might use a walker.  Survivors might speak with slurred words, as though intoxicated.  Survivors might have physical scars or wear a helmet.  Survivors might also look completely normal – because the injury is not of a leg, or hand, or tongue – it is in the brain itself.  Difficulty focusing, difficulty with executive planning, headaches, memory loss, and other effects of brain injury are invisible to a casual observer, and often seen as a character flaw of the brain injury survivor.  Some survivors feel it is necessary to broadcast their injuries as an explanation of the effects of the injury.  The wives of returning soldiers with brain injury have admitted to shaving their husbands’ heads so that trauma scars would be visible explanations of the brain injury.  Some survivors and their families choose not to go out in public for fear of the added trauma of ridicule.

Each of us has a choice in how we interact with others.  Survivors of brain injury are, in more ways than not, just like you and I.  Whether a survivor of brain injury or not, each of us struggles with our own challenges.  We also interact daily with hundreds of others engaged in their own struggles.  We may never know the story of a young man crying uncontrollably at the airport or the story of a middle-aged woman still living with her parents.  While it is part of human nature to judge, it is also part of human nature to show compassion and to feel empathy for others.  A smile or nod of encouragement can lift someone’s spirits as easily as a harsh glare or snide comment can wound the soul.  Brain injury is not selective – it can happen to anyone at any time.  It could affect the best of us, our veterans, our athletes, our scholars.  The girl in this story could be your daughter, sister, wife, mother, cousin, or best friend.  It could be a stranger you meet tomorrow.

What will your reaction be?