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Marina "maso" Hough-Martin aka Marina Darling

Update September 2004

It is now September 2004 and I have finally begun to get my life back and return to work (part-time) in the film industry, which I love with a passion (second only to my husband and children!). Reading my story over, it is painfully obvious how my brain injury affected my word finding and usage. I used to go blind with the pain and could not speak because the words came out non sequentially and having nothing to do with the subject at hand.

I still suffer severe, seizure inducing, pain in my head and neck three times a week. Fortunately, I now live in British Columbia and have been taken care of, for the past three years, by the most wonderful pain specialist (email me if you are in the Vancouver area and need a contact number) who supports me with a radical medication protocol that has kept me out of the ER for over a year.

My husband and I just celebrated twenty years together. Our daughters are now 9 and 5. We were also blessed this February with the birth of our wonderful son Will. All of the children are thriving, healthy, bright and happy people. I think the girls are particularly kind and thoughtful because they have been raised with a sick Mummy in the house. I still haunt the chronic pain and tbi chat sites and do what my husband calls "talking people off the ledge". Only those of us who have been through it can truly appreciate the existence we endure with tbi and pain. That's not including the guilt we suffer for what our illness puts our loved ones through. I intend to keep offering my support wherever I can even when ( as I hope will be the case) my health returns fully. I could not have pulled through this far without the love of my family, the strength of my Church community, and the understanding and friendship I have experienced through the tbi community.

Original Post
It was a rainy fall day with the smell of damp leaves permeating the air. It was a harsh rain that left the roads very slick. It was about noon and I was sitting in the passenger side of my friends car, at a red light, ready to baby sit for her while she rehearsed her role as Elizabeth Taylor in a fabulous play about Montgomery Clift called "the Misfit". Both our baby girls were in the back. My little Sophie looked inquisitively all around her but Francesca (her best little buddy) hated the car seat and was screaming her head off. I had just turned from handing her some toys to distract her when I saw a car careening into us diagonally on the diver side.He had been turning onto the street we were on and had not noticed the oncoming traffic, so he got struck and in turn struck us. My friend, Lindsay, stuck the car in park and braced herself against the steering wheel. Her reaction was lightning like. I was turned at an angle watching the whole thing.

The front of the car was bent in and made the car a write off. Both Lindsay and I leapt out of the car. I tried to do this before undoing my seatbelt and wrenched my shoulder and neck on the belt after having (I am told I must have) hit my head during the accident in which I had sustained a coup contra coup whiplash. I hit myself all over the front of the car. Bruised knees and shins, banged up shoulder on the window. All sorts of small stupid stuff. Who knew the neck whiplash could cause so many problems. When I got out of the car I found my friend yelling at the other driver. The third car driver then approached me as I was getting my baby out of the car and tried to enlist me to his side. I didn't care. My baby (whom I had trussed up like a turkey in her carseat) was fine, that was all I could think about. My friend then spotted me and got me to run up the road to get her husband and explain to him that it was not her fault. She thought (rightly) that he might be more worried about the car.

As I was running I noticed that my knees and shins hurt, and my head felt kind of sore. I wrote it off as after shock. I then made sure we all had hot sweet tea for the shock and got Lindsay released from rehearsal. We went back to my house and spent the rest of the evening in a daze. To this day Lindsay feels guilty that if I had not been doing her a favour I would be fine. As things stand I have had four and a half years of searching for clues as to why I have been so ill and what the cause of my killing headaches is. It took that long for my neurologist to cotton on that it might be a mild traumatic brain injury. I am now on Morphine which controls some of the headaches but I get such severe nausea and diarrhoea that I cannot absorb the medication. Not to mention the blackouts, memory problems, word finding difficulties and general debilitation. The pain would be constant without the morphine. Even so I end up in the emergency room for intravenous meds on average once every two weeks or so, sometimes more, and I get treated like a drug addict. Completely without dignity I am not the person I was. I can't do everything like I used to, which for a formerly very active person is very frustrating. The pain is so bad that, if it weren't for my husband and children, I would kill myself. As things stand I get great comfort and practical help from my church and tremendous support 24/7 from my husband. Just having a diagnosis has taken a weight off our shoulders and finding the tbi sites on the web has made me feel less isolated than I have been. In general I would have to say I have a good life. I have a wonderful husband, a nice home and two beautiful little girls. All I want for is health. Hopefully that will come soon.

Email Marina