Personal Narrative: Traumatic Brain Injury

A time I had to overcome adversity in my life was when I became injured during the middle of cheer tryouts. At the time I was very passionate about competitive cheer, and my goal was to make the junior five team. When I got to tryouts everyone was tumbling, stunting and doing the dance routine. My adrenaline was pumping as I went to warm up my tumbling and throw a roundoff, back handspring, layout. I was determined to accomplish this for tryouts and impress my coach, but I was still very nervous. As I was running into the roundoff back handspring, I knew something was bound to go wrong. The next thing I knew I was in the middle of the air and suddenly landed on my knees, with my ankle twisted under me. My face got bright

It’s a struggle to get out of bed sometimes, I often just sit there struggling to comprehend the sequence of events which have taken place over the past year. I mean, I’m used to this now, its normal to me, but the fact that this has happened and that I am now ‘disabled’ as people would put it is hard to get my head around. And every time I look down I’m reminded of the pain and the struggle I faced, it’s a physical scar which links me to my grueling past, a physical and emotional journey.

Medical and technological advances have led to greater survival rates in individuals suffering from various illness and injury throughout history. This includes individuals who suffer traumatic and nontraumatic brain injuries. Approximately 1.5 million people in the United States sustain a brain injury each year with the survival rate of over 90 percent making brain injury the leading cause for disability in the United States. (Mysiw, Bogner, Corrigan, Fugate, Clinchot, & Kadyan 2006). Cognitive, physical, sensory and behavioral changes are widely noted in individuals in the months and years following a brain injury. However, the psychosocial, psychological and emotional effects of these injuries are less discussed and therefore these aspects can be overlooked when anticipating a course of treatment. Individuals who sustain acquired brain injuries experience significant, lasting impairment in the psychosocial, psychological and emotional aspects of their lives and better understanding of these issues can lead to better treatment and coping skills for these individuals.

Football players risk their lives every time they walk onto the field. Although, some players do not see the risk, because no one has informed them of the consequence. They are not aware that their next football game might be their last game or that their small headache could, in fact, be the beginning of a traumatic brain injury. The coaches are fixated on winning the game and they lose focus of their main priority, their players safety. Due to their lack of knowledge, the players do not receive proper treatment and continue to play. Acting as if nothing is wrong, they go to school and find themselves forgetting where their class is. Memory loss is one of the many symptoms associated with a traumatic brain injury, or concussion. A concussion can be caused by one traumatic impact or many minor blows to the head; also, in some cases, it can be fatal. Preventing concussions is vitally important to ensure the safety of athletes in the future.

On September 2nd 2016 my best friend, Ashley Minor, who is a single mom of two, was working her twelve house shift at the hospital. At the end of her shift her life stopped for a short time when she received a phone call that her 8 year old son Teagan, was hit by a car, and had multiple injuries.

Throughout our lives, every person encounters hardships that put a strain on other aspects of our lives. The biggest hardship that I have faced was taking care of my wife after she suffered a severe head injury while at work. The injury was the result of a salad fridge door falling and striking the back of her head, causing her to receive a severe concussion that lead to post-concussion syndrome. As a result, she became completely dependent on me. Some of the major hardships that we faced during these times are finances, helping her cope with her injury while she recovered, and maintaining my 4.0 GPA.

There were many vital decisions that needed to be made during this 3-month time frame that it took to see a specialist in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Unfortunately, the vital decisions that needed to be made in my recovery were put off until I saw a specialized physician that could properly make those decisions. Therefore, this prolonged my recovery and did not allow me to have the proper resources to get better. Once I was finally able to see different specialists in Albuquerque the care was still not at the level I needed for my injury. My injury was complex and was ultimately unable to be treated by doctors in New Mexico. In my desperation to get better, I began researching online for alternative treatments outside the state of New Mexico. I eventually discovered a Health Center in Dallas, Texas, which specializes in the treatment of traumatic brain injuries. There, I was fortunate to have a dedicated team of specialists effectively treat my post-concussive

Over the past four years I have seen more doctors than an average person would see in their lifetime. From endocrinologists to neurosurgeons, I have tirelessly sought medical help to overcome multiple traumatic brain injuries I incurred as an early teen. Prior to these head injuries I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do with my life or what my future would encompass. The outlook I had on life prior to my head injuries has drastically changed through the course of my recovery. Although my road to recovery has been filled with hardships, disappointments, and pain, I have found a new direction filled with opportunity to advocate on behalf of others.

My neurosurgeon, husband, daughter, and I agreed to a plan. On February 18, he will be removing the right side of my hardware from my skull down to C-2/3 where he will saw the rod in half and leave the rest of my fusion. The right side of my fusion has failed. While removing the fusion, he will be taking four screws out of my brain and one out of my neck. My fusion was placed nine years and two months ago; therefore, it has been in my body for a long time. He is leaving in the left side of my fusion, which is from my skull to C-5 because my neck is not stable enough without it. After he removes the titanium hardware, he will be taking a cadaver bone as well as removing bone marrow from my hip to rebuild my skull. He has to cut down the

Every year there is more and more worries about whether or not football should be discontinued because of all the traumatic brain injuries that happen to all different aged kids. “A concussion is defined as a complex pathophysiological process that affects the brain, typically induced by trauma to the brain” (Concussion). With over “1.6 million to 3.8 million concussions occurring each year”(Concussion) this debate could be a highly one sided decision whether or not to end the game of American Football. “More than one million young athletes play highschool football every year” (Kounang). This is only including high school so these numbers do not include college or the

We also got a brother along with a mother and father. He was born with alcohol syndrome because his mother drank when she was pregnant with him. We all had our own bag of problems. I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) for everything that happened to me. When I was a year old, one of my foster families didn't strap me into my car seat, and they got into a wreck. The car accident started my PTSD, but after that, everything bad that happened made my PTSD worse. My sister had mental health issues, to the point where the doctors said her mindset would remain at 15 until she's 35.

Traumatic brain injury, also called acquired brain injury or simply head injury, is a result of a sudden blow to the head when an external force is applied causing a disruption of the physiological stability of the brain locally. It can also occur when an object pierces the skull and enters the brain tissue and when elevation in the intracranial pressure occurs and potentially dramatic changes in the blood flow within and to the brain. These changes may produce a diminished or altered state of consciousness. Traumatic brain injury is a nondegenerative, noncongential defect in which there may be permanent or temporary impairments to cognition, physical, and psychosocial functions.

According to the CDC (United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), there are approximately 1.5 million people in the U.S. who suffer from a traumatic brain injury each year (CDC, 2003). Also, the CDC reports that nearly 50,000 people die from TBI each year and 85,000 people suffer long-term disabilities and slowly growing. Traumatic brain injury, also well known as TBI, is when severe change(s) in a normal functioning brain has abruptly changed due to a plethora of different MOI’s, some include: open or closed head injuries, deceleration injuries, chemical/toxic, hypoxia, tumors, infections and stroke. Car accidents, firearms, and falls often cause many TBI’s. Consequences of a brain injury vary from person-to-person because no two injuries are alike. A brain injury is different from a broken leg or punctured lung. Brain injuries do not heal like other injuries; once the brain is damaged it's hard to heal the damaged areas in the brain. Once the areas in the brain are affected it can lead to limited use of specific body parts, alter your personality, mental abilities, abnormal speech/language, impaired or loss of thinking and emotions (depression) and sensation (vision or hearing.)

Every brain injury is different, but most who suffer from a traumatic brain injury remember life before their brain injury. However, I do not remember life before my brain injury because I was just ten weeks old when I was in a car crash that caused a traumatic brain injury. I do have my parent’s accounts to rely on however. Before my brain injury, I was an easy-going baby. After my brain injury, I was hypersensitive to sensations and situations like being laid down on my back made me panic.

The research team of Marini, Galetto, Zampieri, Vorano, Zettin, and Carlomagno (2011) aimed to compare the narrative skills of 14 Italian speaking individuals with a traumatic brain injury (TBI) to a group of 14 healthy individuals. Each participant produced three narrative samples from three images, which included a picture of a picnic and two cartoons with six scenes illustrating a story. The narrations were judged on the productivity (total words spoken, speech rate, and MLU), thematic units, lexical information units (LIUs), and the thematic density. Marini et al. (2011) found that the individuals with a TBI produced similar numbers of words but spoke at a slower