A Twitter of a crash anniversary blog post this year. Mocha in one hand, croissant flaking all over me, and iPhone in the other, for over an hour, I tweeted:
17 years. Creeping up to 20. Hard to believe this time 17 years ago, I had less than 3 hours to live without a #braininjury .
A series of unfortunate events that ordinary day was 17 years ago unbeknownst to me. Here is a series of without #braininjury tweets.
Without #braininjury I could go to the AGO to see the mystical landscapes. And I’d have friends or hubby wanting to go with me.
Without #braininjury I could organize, gussy up for, attend, and have a blast at a party.
Without #braininjury I’d be going to see a movie weekly (though w the offerings these days maybe not) enjoy and REMEMBER it!
Without #braininjury I wouldn’t have to take Cogmed. I had a photographic memory & a trapdoor working memory. When they failed, I was lost.
Without #braininjury I never would have needed brain biofeedback, audiovisual entrainment, cranioelectrical stim, laser therapy.
Without #braininjury I wouldn’t have discovered loyalty is for the birds and trumpeter swans, talk of being there like downburst: here gone.
Without #braininjury I’d still have my full sense of humour. Laughter wouldn’t have become a stranger: strange to understand, strange in me.
Without #braininjury I wouldn’t have learnt emotions are essential to thinking. Emotions assist clarity & speed of thought. Who knew!
Without #braininjury I wouldn’t have learnt one’s reputation is entirely in other people’s hands so fuggetabout it.
Without #braininjury I wouldn’t have sold my film camera. I probably would’ve joined @Flickr though.
Without #braininjury I wldn’t have learnt point ‘n shoot photography can be fun. I wldn’t have developed a shoot-see-what-appears technique.
Without #braininjury I’d still be in the thick of fractious family and family politics. Maybe it’s a blessing not to be…
Without #braininjury I wouldn’t have met some very interesting, kind, caring, intelligent ppl – some sans concussion.
Without #braininjury I probably wldn’t have returned to the passions of my youth – brain & psychology – except thru writing. How ironic.
Without #braininjury I wldn’t be this open. Self-control, self-contained me. Losing it so freeing. But ppl prefer controlled.
Without #braininjury I wldn’t’ve learnt how fed up, bored ppl get w TBI healing time & want I meet their need to not kn, not my need to heal
Without #braininjury I wouldn’t have reached the limits of my persistence.
Without #braininjury I’d be reading mysteries, high brow & how-to books, 3 newspapers, magazines on cooking, science, politics, gardening…
Without #braininjury I wouldn’t have lost my ability to write short stories. But I wouldn’t have written my novels either.
Without #braininjury my piano wouldn’t be silent. But it would be really cluttered still.
Without #braininjury my life would still be noisy, chaotically busy energetically noisy, not silent and under the rule of fatigue.
Without #braininjury I wouldn’t have met the people shut away from society in day programs so docs wldn’t have to learn how to heal neurons.
Without #braininjury I’d probably have joined Twitter earlier and forever be dealing w ppl IRL grumpy about it. At least spared latter.
Without #braininjury I’d have written, published LIFELINER years earlier. It would have been a very different book. But better??! Maybe not.
Without #braininjury I’d still have hope. Maybe I do…
Without #braininjury I mayn’t’ve learnt how different I am frm family in blowing past bounds of accepted medical thinking to find recovery.
Without #braininjury I wldn’t’ve discovered an area where choosing NOT to heal a life-changing injury is accepted & imposed medical practice
Without #braininjury I wldn’t have experienced ppl giving up on me, of comparing me to others unfavourably, of fighting me on my recovery.
Without #braininjury I wouldn’t have learnt what my IQ is (not really essential 2kn pre-TBI). And how much brain biofeedback can restore it.
Without #braininjury I wouldn’t have fully understood the Book of Job. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/61372
Without #braininjury I’d have a very different life. Would it be better? I don’t know. But at least I’d still be able to read, work in flow.
Without #braininjury I’d still know the insurance industry is rife with fraud by insurers and docs via IMEs are complicit. #onpoli
Ppl say appreciate their catastrophic injuries,wldn’t change. Not sure abt that 4me! But without #braininjury I’d be poorer in understanding
Without #braininjury I wldn’t’ve learnt how the DSM is used to constrain knowledge of the brain & its injury & so prevent recovery. #hcsmca
Without #braininjury I think I still would have seen how the gratitude movement is used to deny the existence & thus healing of suffering.
Without #braininjury I doubt my measles-damaged vision would have returned. So there is that! #eyesurgery
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Seventeen years . . . Wow. I can’t quite believe it. I’ve come so far, yet I’m so far from what my goal of complete recovery was in early 2001, a mere six months after my diagnosis of closed head injury. I doubt now it’s possible but know more recovery is possible than what the medical experts still peddle to too many today.
