It was the morning of May 3rd, 2012. My wife and daughter were at our home tending to the yearly neighborhood wide garage sale. My son, a kindergartener, was already at school for the day. I was one of our town’s family doctors but wasn’t working that day so I ran into my father-in-law’s local hardware store to buy some flowers for our front porch, something my wife had been anxious to get for quite some time.
And that’s all I can remember about that day, the rest is gone from my memory, but it's certainly a day I’ll never forget.
I was headed home after picking up the flowers and drove my truck through a well-known and well-traveled four-way stop in our small little farming community. At the same time, another driver ran through the flashing red light, broadsided me, and slammed me into a concrete utility pole. A young woman who was a patient of mine was at a nearby service station getting her oil changed and immediately came over to see if I was still alive, and after finding out that I was, she promptly called 911. Rescue workers soon arrived to the scene, and after quickly evaluating and seeing the serious of my condition, they summoned a helicopter for transport. The helicopter picked me up and flew me to Christ Advocate Hospital, a trauma center just outside of Chicago. Neither the scope of my injuries nor my prognosis were known at the time I left the scene but it was uncertain if I was going to survive.
Based on the severity of my injuries, I am certainly very fortunate to be alive today. I sustained several broken ribs, one of which resulted in a collapsed lung and required the placement of a chest tube. But most significantly, I sustained a severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) when my head hit the concrete pole. This was all something I found out later on, because at the time, I was oblivious to what had just happened to me.
When I was in the hospital immediately following the accident, I was suffering from something called post-traumatic amnesia (PTA), a condition commonly seen after severe head trauma. I was completely unaware of who I was, where I was, and what I was doing there. This state of marked confusion lasted about 2 1/2 weeks. The first real recollection I have is looking out my "hotel" room at the "ocean." In all actuality, I was gazing out the window of my 10th floor hospital room in downtown Chicago and looking at beautiful Lake Michigan.
My doctors initially thought I’d need to go to another rehab facility for a prolonged course of inpatient therapy. But much to their surprise, once my amnesia cleared, my recovery went very well - and also quite fast! So, after just one month, I was able to go home and finish my rehab as an outpatient.
I remember at the time thinking that with enough time and therapy, I would make it all the way back to my pre-brain injury self. I would return to being the same person I was before. There were many well-meaning people who had the same impression and some who even thought I was already there. They would frequently say things like "so glad you’re back to normal.” I remember wanting so much to believe they were right, but I knew they weren’t, because I knew that I wasn't.
My normal was lost and nowhere to be found. But I ended up finding something else later on that I wasn’t expecting to find. I found out that when it comes to us humans, normal’s not only impossible; it’s also undesirable. At least, undesirable in the way our society likes to define it and how I used to see it.
