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Jody Wallace
I can truthfully start my life in 1983 when I was 28 years old. On January twenty first1983, I was married, living in Chicago, when my husband and I were in our car about a mile from our house in a northern suburb of Chicago, with another couple in the backseat,when a car coming from the other direction swerved not to hit a deer and hit our gar on my side, the front passenger seat. I was taken to Condel Hospital which is close to where the accident was. I think I was there for 2 days when I was transferred to Evanston Hospital in the Trauma Center. I was in a coma for 4 months. While I was in a coma, operated on my leg which was shattered. They had to take a piece of bone from my hip to put in my leg. there were other internal injuries also, I had a shunt in my head and others. As a matter of fact I do not remember anything until I was in the rehab unit. I learned what had happened. My family came yo visit and I did not know who they were, I did not even know who I was!

When I came out of the coma, I was a newborn baby but 28 years old. I did not know who I was. My memory of my first 28 years was gone! I had gone to college and had a degree in Fashion Merchandising. I became a buyer of women's clothes at a department store in Springfield, IL. where I am from. I do not know how long I was working until I got married and moved to Chicago. I do not remember getting married.

I do not remember much of being in the hospital except I had to learn to dress myself, bath myself, learn how to read, write, spell, feed myself just about everything like a baby!

After I was out of the hospital for about a year, I left my husband of 2 and one-half years and moved back home to live with my dad. I left because he could not accept my loss of memory and hit me when I forgot things.

Thanks to my father, I have been volunteering at a local hospital since 1985, which I love, and through the Illinois Head Injury Association, I met my husband of 9 years! It was a long hard struggle but it paid off for be, and my husband who is also head injured plus had 3 hip replacements due to a motorcycle accident.