Perhaps not everyone will want to hear my story but I feel it might give hope to someone.

I had spent Christmas 1999 in NYC, with my family. We had had a great time. We arrived home in Ireland on 31st December to celebrate new year in our village in County Wicklow. All my friends were home for the new year too, so on January 1st 2000 we all went out. We made plans to go out the next night too. So on 2nd January 2000 I got myself together and left my home place about 7:50 pm. I had my own car, and a good job to pay for the running of it. It wasn't far to where I was going, but I never made it.

I have no memory of my accident or the day of my accident or the next three weeks, but what follows is what I have been told by the police and those who were at my accident.

About fifteen minutes after I left home, on a wide stretch of main road I was hit by another car. I was hit so hard that my car flew into the air and landed on its roof, trapping me inside. There were no witnesses to my accident, but soon people began to arrive on the scene. I was very lucky, the first person to come on my side of the road was a nurse, working in a general hospital ten minutes away. The next person to arrive on the scene was a doctor, also working in the same hospital. I was hanging upside down in my car. I learned later that I had hit my head very badly, had punctured a lung, broken several bones and extensively damaged my legs. I also learned from the police that I was semi-conscious when they came on the scene. According to the police my accident happened at approximately 8:04 pm, but I was not cut from the wreckage until 8:50 pm. So I was upside down and without maximum oxygen for nearly an hour.

When they got me out I had to be revived at the scene of the accident, I was then brought to the nearby general hospital. I was so badly injured that my parents did not recognise me when they flew into the Accident and Emergency department of the hospital. Once they had me stablized they rushed me to Beaumont Hospital in Dublin, forty minutes away, under police escort. I had then to be revived twice in the ambulance on the way there.

In Beaumont I again had to be stabalized before they moved me to the ICU. I lay there in a coma for the next three days. Even after I woke up I have no memory at all.

I recovered very rapidly. I was discharged from hospital 19 days after going in. I was terribly lucky.

Since my accident I have not returned to work, as I am unable to. The past ten months have been extremely hard. In the beginning I had problems speaking, in that I could not say what I wanted, even though I knew exactly what I wanted to say. I could not balance, I could hardly walk. My parents took me home to County Wicklow and cared for me there. The fed me, washed me, took me for little walks, held me and basically loved me. Despite all this love I was extremely depressed. I felt fate had dealt me a raw deal, that I should be dead. I mean look at all those people who never make it, I used to tell myself. Who decided that I should? Given that I was deemed suicidal I was sent to see a psychiatrist, who prescibed anti-depressants. I am feeling so much better now its amazing. I was never like this before my accident, but aparently it is one of the side affects of TBI. I also see a psychologist, who is helping me retrain myself to go back to work.

I feel I have changed tremendously since my accident. My personality has changed, my outlook on life has changed, my life has changed. No amount of money will ever replace the year that I have lost, but no amount of work experience will ever give me the positive life experience that I have received as a result.

It later emerged that the driver who hit me was drunk. He was also on my side of the road, and to make matters worse he was a police officer. However, the police here in Ireland have been fantastic and very helpful to me. The court case for the other man is to be heard on 7th December. It will be hard but an important hurdle I have to get by and over if I am to move on with my life.

I feel better about my TBI now, considering in reality I should not really be here, or able to type this story. My neurologist told me that a very small percentage of people with a TBI as serious as mine survive as well as I did. In reality I should be dead, or worse very badly brain damaged. Given my injuries, my brain was deprived of oxygen for almost an hour, it bled and swelled. For a long time it was touch and go, both living wise and surviving normally. I lived, but I am definitely not the same person I was a year ago. However I face the future with an open mind, and hope. Hope that I can continue to survive as well as I have and hope that my story can give a future to others like me.

Today I can walk, run, talk, drive, use my computer and hold conversations. Outwardly I am a perfectly normal human being. But it is the inward pain that no one can see that I am dealing with. The pain and realisation that I will never be the same person again, and I will always be in my own eyes a walking miracle, a survivor.

I hope others can take hope from this. My advise? Mind your head! It is the most important part of your body, though few know this. Your brain is terribly important, take care of it.

Thank you for your time
Email Gillian
Ireland