All Walks of Life

I have seen the statistics a million times.

• 2 million traumatic brain injuries a year in the United States
• 2% of the population suffer from permanent disabilities
• TBI is the leading cause for death or disability world-wide

TBI alone - nothing to be said for stroke, brain tumor, or any other type of brain injury.

No matter how many times I see the facts and figures, it always startles me when  I meet people whose lives have been affected by brain injury.

  Last night was no exception.

P and I had plans to hit the town, a CD release party, a comedy show, a Moroccan gala.... it was going to be a fun

 night.  Even better, I'd get to see my friend Y who I hadn't seen in ages.  I was really looking forward to the night ... until I stepped

 outside.  Somehow during the course of the day the temperature had dropped from chilly to unbearably cold.  For a fleeting moment I contemplated staying in and watching a movie, but I'd promised, and I'm morally opposed to flakes.  Sighing, I gritted my teeth, pulled on another several layers of clothing, and forged into the snow-swept streets of New York.

After deciding the Moroccan gala was really not our scene, P and I headed down to Asa Ransom's CD release party at

 the Delancey Lounge.   I hadn't

 seen Y since she started her

 clothing line, Social Rebel

 Clothing, socialrebelclothing. Com and it would be great to see her, the band she was sponsoring, and introduce my friends in fashion.

It turns out that P is almost as directionally challenged as I am.  Between the two of us, we came dangerously close to taking up residence in the Port Authority maze, missed our subway transfer, and almost froze to death in the Arctic Lower East Side while trying desperately to find the club.   After feeling to returned to our extremities, the thawing-pain had left, and our bodies had started generating body heat again, we headed downstairs to watch the show.

Watching the show, P and Y started talking, and Y introduced me to her two roommates.  I skeptically regarded the tall, pretty girls, dressed to a T in Williamsburg hipster chique.  Biting back my knee-jerk reaction to stereotype them, I sternly reminded myself they were friends of Y's.  The girl on the left, D, and I started talking; a set designer,  from L.A.... no surprises.  When she asked me about myself I mentioned the blog.  "Oh, what is your blog about?" she asked.

Telling people "Oh, I write a blog about traumatic brain injury" is conversational suicide.  Coming right out and saying it on your first meeting is not necessarily the best way to make contacts or connections.   "Well..." I hedged a moment.  "It's about traumatic brain injury," I said it in one breath, throughly expecting an incredulous "why the hell would you write about that" look.

"That's an issue I know a lot about. Who do you know with TBI?"  The girl's humorless smile and somber eyes spoke volumes.  

I couldn't help but gape at her.   I quickly told her I had one, and a little about the blog, and incredulously asked her how on earth she knew about TBI.

D’s mother had suffered a terrible stroke, and gone to Kentfield Rehabilitation and Specialty Hospital for rehab.   http://www.kentfieldrehab.com/ As one of the leading TBI rehab centers in the country, she had become intimately acquainted with TBI over the years.  Her mother had proved doctors wrong again and again.  When they gave her no chance of recovery, she had survived every one of the death sentences (6 months, 1 year, 5 years) they gave.  She was communicating on an extremely high level – almost back to her old self -when they told D her mother would never regain her cognitive skills.  

Doctors can be wonderful people, but their prognoses for recover err on the side of conservative.  I know that this must be to avoid lawsuits, instilling false hope, and causing needless pain.  But I don’t know if they can possibly realize how much pain these dismal prognoses cause.   Perhaps if patients and their families were given hope, instead of these dismal “facts,” then the odds, the prognoses, would change.  I would argue that hope is unquestionably one of the strongest weapons in your recovery arsenal.

And it is vital that you never lose hope.  The adage that recovery is a life long process can be taken in a very positive way.  Recovery from brain injury is not limited, as we are led to believe, to the first six months, or even first six years.  Further recovery is always possible.....