A Drunk Driver Crashed Into Me. When I Woke Up, I Was A Completely Different Person.

The new “me” had never read books I loved, never shared favorite times with my child. They tested my brain hundreds of times and found lots of things bit the dust, like the file that encodes new memories, and the file that integrates physical movements so you don’t fly down the steps or fall out of your chair. I lost what happened a minute ago, a page ago, a lifetime ago. This is called amnesia.

Amnesia can take anything and make it disappear. Your child’s first words. Your mom’s last words. Mine came with a side of aphasia. That means I couldn’t find the words I needed or put them together so they made sense. I said stuff like “white stuff sky,” which meant snow, or “cow thing pants” which meant belt or “green thing dirt,” which meant plant. Words often seemed to start mid-sentence — and end there, too. 

There are three stages of making a memory: encoding (which means you learn something), consolidation (which means you store it), and recall (which means you can find it again). Learning was hard. Storing was hard. Recall was almost impossible. I was impaired and could not be repaired. A doctor told me so.  There’s an irony: The drunk woman who hit me was impaired, too.

You may wonder if “insurers” covered health care bills or compensated me for pain and suffering. The answer is no. The drunk driver had three prior DUIs and no longer had a license or insurance. Because she had stolen the truck she was driving, the owner’s insurance didn’t pay either. The car I was in was parked and I was waiting for the woman who owned it to return, so she was not at fault and her insurer didn’t pay. 

As a result, most of the massive medical bills were paid by me, or rather the power of attorney on my behalf. Health insurance did not/does not cover motor vehicle accidents. I encountered a Catch-22 that removed me from outpatient rehab at the end of year one, which may or may not have been linked to insurance, too. Or, rather, lack of it. The head guy (pun intended) in neuro rehab decided I was both too screwed-up and not screwed-up enough to keep receiving help. If I were more screwed up, they could do something. If I were less screwed-up, they could do something. But I wasn’t, so they couldn’t.

And, so, I relearned to read under the patient care of no one at all. I achieved mixed results. In year two post-accident, I began trying to read a book. I read the same pages for two years. At first, they meant nothing. Then they meant something, for a few seconds. If I began where I’d left off, say on page 5, and found a character was on a train, I had no idea why he was on it or where he was going.

At the same time, I started scratching anything I could recall on any surface I could find — paper plates, paper cups, placemats, napkins, coffee stirrers and Popsicle sticks. I called them scraps. They were not in alphabetical order, not in numerical order, not in chronological order, but out of order, like me. I stuffed them in brown paper shopping bags and then stashed the bags in a closet. 

A few years ago, Google provided 115,000,000 ways to “clear your mind.” These included clearing your mind of stress, clearing your mind of guilt, clearing your mind of clutter, clearing your mind of negative thoughts, clearing your cookies, clearing your cache, clearing your sinuses, and clearing your mind of all thought. I had. I also found 8,310,000 jokes about brain injury on Google. Plus, of course, in cartoons all over the planet, people like us are hilarious, especially when our skulls get smashed. Think baseball bats, rifle butts, and coconuts on craniums.

The intact brain is amazing. The three-pound blob remembers the theme music for The Flintstones, the name of your fifth-grade French teacher, and your childhood phone number.  But put it through a windshield at 70 miles an hour,r and then it’s a crapshoot. You might remember something that happened a moment ago, or you might not. You might not walk or talk again. You might wake up as an entirely different person. Or you might never wake up.

Seven years ago, I began attending a newly formed brain trauma group. One member, Daniel, “came back” from two weeks in a coma. Daniel’s counselor says that the “old” Daniel is gone. The new Daniel has new frontal lobes and a new personality, as well as the wife of his former self and three kids he can’t name. Another member, Mel, kept saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” like he did something wrong. We were told most of us were in the program due to someone driving while drunk.