I was happily married
I was the father of two young, healthy children.
And I’d been a family doctor in my wife’s hometown in northwest Indiana for six years.
The plans I had envisioned for my life were all coming to fruition.
But on the morning of May 3rd, 2012, these plans came to a bit of a screeching halt.
I was passing through a four-way stop on my way home from the local hardware store when my truck was hit by another large work truck. It was an intersection I drove through nearly every day. The impact pushed me into a concrete pole and I suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) when my head powerfully struck the pole.
A couple of weeks later, when I was finally able to process what had just happened to me, one of the first things I remember was being told I’d have to try and find what they kept calling my "new normal." They said that because of the severity of my brain injury I was going to be a different person. But I didn't believe a word of it. My goal from the start was to go back to being who I was before. I just wanted to find my old normal. However, despite my very best efforts, this never happened!
Eventually, I accepted things would never be the same and knew that I needed to redefine my life. And if I was ever going to do this, I had to let go of my old normal and start looking for the new one whose existence I’d been denying for way too long!
