ganglion axon cells firing in the brain
*from Wisconsin University
at Madison collection.
In November of 2003, I was involved in a serious car accident. The driver behind me had by his own admission smoked one joint before getting behind the wheel that afternoon. Apparently, he shouldn't have.
I saw him coming up behind me "too fast." I attempted to avoid the accident by turning into the parking lot of a store on my right. I did manage the turn. And he did hit my car anyway.
The other driver hit my car so hard that I ran into a house, leaving a hole in the foundation. I didn't know I had hit the house until the following evening when I went back to see the scene of the accident.
I remember hitting my head repeatedly against the ceiling of the car and my head rocking back at least once. I thought to myself when I saw the house coming, "This is it. I'm dead." I had no attachment or feeling to those words.
The next thing I remember is the airbag going off and my car stopping by hitting another parked car. The other driver continued downstreet where he caused a head-on collision. They all got the broken bones. I got the brain and spinal injuries. That knowledge would come a month later.
One of the things I never knew before that day is that when an airbag is activated, a puff of smoke comes out too. I thought that the car was going to be on fire. I was surprised to find myself alive, and not wishing to burn up--I got out.
People gathered around and after several fruitless 911 calls--and the storeowner across the street driving to the police station to demand help for me--the ambulance came. The people downstreet were being airlifted to a trauma center in the next city and for awhile, I had been the forgotten casuality.
The woman in the ambulance kept talking to me and demanding that I answer her questions. I was very tired but she wanted me to stay awake. I would not open my eyes because the brightness of the day bothered me.
At the emergency room, the doctor and nurses there "forgot" about my head. The doctor ordered x-rays of everything BUT my head. I was sent home two hours later with a diagnosis of a cervical strain. "Concussion" had not even been marked off on the instruction sheet for aftercare.
I slept for twenty hours a day for the next two months. When I was awake, I drank a ton of coffee, swore constantly, and told my mother-in-law filthy vile obscene jokes. I don't remember the jokes now. I remember drinking coffee and cussing and my husband trying to shut me up whenever I opened my mouth in front of his mother.
A month after the accident, I realized that there was something wrong with my vision. I went to a regular eye doctor. The chart looked like Chinese characters. The eye doctor at one point was holding my very tender sore head and screaming at me to "follow the finger" without moving my head. I could not do that, and to this day that is very difficult due to my TBI-related vision problems. But I did not know that then.
Finally the doctor said to me that I can't read the chart because I am near-sighted, told his assistant to write down "post head trauma" on my chart, and left the room. She left too. I had to go home and look up "post head trauma" on the internet to find out what it was. And that is how I found out that I have a traumatic brain injury caused by the car accident.
That started my contact with the local RCIL, and the round of doctors who did know about tbi. There was almost immediately the special eye doctor--a developmental optomotrist, and a chiropractor who knew about tbi. Then came the needle-sticking neurologist, the second neurologist when the first one moved away, the anesthesiologist, the neuropsychologist, the psychiatrist, the "cognitive rehabilitation art therapist" who threw me out! of her version of art therapy for refusing to go to HER internist for more drugs, two bouts of physical therapy, a TENS unit, and hydrotherapy which was successful in treating my spinal pain.
I also joined BIANYS--the Brain Injury Association of New York State, the local traumatic brain injury support group, and began to fight with VESID (like OVR in other states) to get appropriate specific tbi-competent services so that way I can someday get back to working. The fight with VESID is still happening. They do not want to help me until I am able to work twenty hours a week. If I was able to work twenty hours a week, I would not have gotten SSD. Go figure.
Today, there are things I am stuck with. I never did get cognitive rehab except for what I have done on my own through the internet. The spinal problems are permanent. The TBI-vision related difficulties have improved somewhat with extensive vision therapy but I still have double vision and my eyes still balk at working with each other or with my brain. Vision originates in the brain. I have hyperreflexia with clonus--a very common after-effect with closed head injury. Clonus is easily demonstrated with the little rubber hammer that doctors are so fond of--my muscles are jumpy and do not stop moving when they are supposed to. The second neurologist told me that I am fortunate that I can walk so well and that my balance has improved to "excellent." Usually people with clonus have balance problems and need an ankle brace or an ankle-knee brace to walk. I don't. My muscles stiffen up if I don't exercise. I do stretching, strengthening, and ROMs daily. I have to. I had to get shots to lessen the trigger points in my neck and my back. I had to get three sets of nerve blocks put in the back of my head to stop the headaches which were 24-7. I have occasional difficulties with mild expressive aphasia. Very few people notice because I'm able to think fast enough to find the word I want or a similar word. I can no longer multi-task. And I suffer from a vastness of fatigue I never have known.
I am also very fortunate. I am not dead. I can walk. I can drive. I can see. I can talk, read, write. I know this. I have beaten death.
The laws need to be changed. Insurance companies think that everyone who files any type of claim is faking. So they send us to their doctors for Insurance Carrier Exams. I refuse to call them "Independent Medical Exams" because they are not independent nor medical. The common scenerio for many people is that the insurance company involved will find some "reason" to withhold payments until the last possible moment. That happened to me but I have learned that I am in a crowd of company. The insurance company also sends people with cameras to take pictures of the injured in an attempt to show that the injured is "malingering."
My attorney does not permit me to speak with my insurance company. I think he decided that around the time when the hospital collection agency called me asking me why I have not paid them my co-pay yet. This fifty dollars I believe is NOT my responsibility--at the time, none of the medical bills were being paid by my insurance carrier yet. The medical insurance (wrongly) picked up everything but my co-pay. And I wasn't having it. I told the grossly rude collection agency dude to *uck himself, and then I called him back and repeated myself, in case he didn't hear me the first time.
Now here in New York State, we have "no-fault automobile insurance." I think the 'no-fault' in our policy means, "It ain't OUR fault so we ain't paying til we gotta," or "No matter what happened, it's YOUR fault." This has to change. When I feel better, I am going to create that change so that no one else has to go through what I went through.
The Workers' Compensation system and Social Security Disability laws are also adversarial. They also use "their doctors" to claim that the injured and the disabled can work. I have heard many horror stories from victims of those agencies also.
Now there is going to be a limit on the number of prescription medications that a person can have Medicaid pay for. Sometimes I really think that all of these insurance companies and agencies are hoping that people will DIE so they won't have to pay.
I acknowledge that there are abuses within the system. I maintain that the system is far more abusive than the 5% of people who really are "faking." And there must be something wrong with anyone who "fakes an injury" because they are willing to jump through the hoops in order to get some money.
And by the way folks, it's NOT free money. I paid into the social security system for many years. I also paid my car insurance premiums. But when misfortune happens and I need help, it is not forthcoming. In fact, the help is delayed.
If you haven't been there experiencing these things, then you DON'T know what it is like. Please don't judge me until you have walked in MY sneakers for the past year and a half.
-sapphoq
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