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BettyAnn Rogan
hi, I am a five year survior of a TBI. My road to becoming a TBI member actually began about two months before the actual injury. On the evening of September third, 1992, I started having headaches all in the back of myhead. Since I had spent that afternoon compiling a family budget for the upcoming holidays, that following putting the youngest of my six children, a five year old girl, to bed and my husband wasn't home, I decided to read and relax a bit. However, I no sooner sat down when I starting having unusually painful headaches. I stopped trying to read and watched tv. About ten minutes later though, I had a momentary blurry vision problem. Fearing the onset of a migrane and knowing I had to a inservice class the next morning for my job as a nurse, I went to bed early.

As I hurriedly got ready in the morning, I was surprised to realize my headache had not disappeared but it had become worse. I managed to finish the inservice class early and arrived home with a more severe headache than when I left. All that day my headache persisted, so when my husband came home from work, I immediately went to a nearby walk in clinic. The doctor could not find anything wrong to cause my headache, so he ordered some pain pills and suggested I see a nuerologist.

Well since the headaches intensified, I did see a nuerologist. Actually with an ever present headache for three weeks following the onset of my first unusual headache, I went to the emergency room three times, in addition to see two nuerologists. Even though I told each doctor I saw that my headaches were painful,, unusual and not like any previous headache I had ever had, all the doctors diagnosised migranes headaches.

At this point my husband didn't know what to think. On one hand five doctors agreed I had migranes. And yet each day my headache persisted, I couldn't sleep or eat. So even though a nuerologist advise against my needing a MRI, my husband make arrangements for one. The MRI was done on a Thursday and it revealed I had a large deep brain stem anuersym. I was immediately hospitalized. After a angio we were adviced to seek treatment of the anuersym with a fairly new radiology procedure into the brain.

Well I had that procedure and it did repair the anuersym, but due to complications after that procedure and ill effects from drugs given, I suffered a brain hemmorage. My husband was told I would die that night, I Obviously didn't. Then he was told I would probably remain iin a coma, I didn't. After about nine days I came out of the coma. At that point the doctors said I wouldn't be cognitive or have a intact memory. Well by God's grace I am completely cognitive with intact short and long term memories. I can remember running around with my children, holding my husband and the right dose and drugs for ailments. However due to the brain hemmorage, my legs are completely paralyzed and I can't walk with my children and since my right arm is also paralyzed and my left arm is extremely weak, I can no longer hold my husband. But perhaps most devastating of all my disabilities is the fact that I can't explain any drugs or anything because I can not speak at all. And after 51/2 years and two rehabs, I am still very, very physically disabled. Fortunately, although I sometimes find my husband's disorganized ways infuriating, Basically he is a very devoted lovving and helpful husband. So at 47,I struggle to adapt to my disabilities, encouraged by a attentiive loving husband, six devoted children now agged 11-26, and a precious grandson,.