Hi TBI friends,

Life was pretty easy until April 5, 2002. I became comatose and stopped breathing from a medication that had been put into my intravenous solution. Since my brain damage is being litigated I can't go into detail yet, but once the suit is settled, I plan to publish an account of the events that surrounded my injury.

My most immediate awareness of "waking up" was to the noise of having my brain cat scanned. I had been taken to an emergency room 75 miles away from the town in which I live. I had been driven to this hospital by private automobile. After having gone through the emergency room and catscanner, I was transferred to the psychiatric ward. In my usual cooperative manner I settled into the routine of the psych ward. A sign with my name on it was placed at the entrance of my room, so that the nursing staff wouldn't have to keep redirecting me each time I wanted to return to my room. My awareness was very foggy and I didn't have any memory of what had happened to me. It was sometime (months) before I figured out the reason they had admitted me to this psychiatric unit was because they assumed that this injury was an attempt by me to end my life.

After many high tech tests of my brain, it was determined that I would benefit from speech therapy. That therapy consisted of many very difficult logic problems. Slowly I began to regain my memory of what caused my coma and I became extremely angry at the perpetrator.

Prior to this injury I was practicing anesthesia as a nurse anesthetist and had a very active, independent and colorful life. My days are now spent struggling to maintain independent living.

If you are not familiar with short-term memory loss I will try to sum it up by giving this one example of what my life is like now. When I awaken in the morning, I know that I am in my own bedroom, but I don't have a clue what day it is, or what month it is, or what year it is, or what yesterdays events were, or what I need to do today.
I am totally lost until I get up and read my notes from yesterday. Then I work at piecing together where I am and what has happened, and what I am supposed to do today.

There is now a 2 year history of me making all kinds of mistakes, some of them with significant financial consequences. Presently, I am working at finding a way to support myself financially. I am very grateful for finding this brain injury chatroom.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

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