Brain Injury, Trauma, and Grief

Welcome

Welcome to the world of brain injury, an unimaginable world. A world you and I don’t want to be in. And definitely not alone in it! I used to ask myself, “How on earth did this happen?! This isn’t the future I envisioned!” How many times have we heard about self-fulfilling prophecies and needing to visualize the future we want? I’ve lost count. It’s so frustrating because I certainly didn’t prophesy brain injury. After brain injury, you might as well visualize teleporting onto the Enterprise deck with Captain Kirk, for all visualizing doesn’t work. Brain injury, trauma, and grief throw up sky-high, Earth-thick barriers. You can visualize the future you want until the stars plummet into the ocean, but until you’re treating the neurons and healing the trauma and brain injury grief, visualizing ain’t gonna work.

But make no mistake, you in all your brain injury glory, sunk in the pain of trauma and grief, are an integral part of the universe. A unique, desired light. The universe wants you here, heard your pained cry to heal, and led you to this book to demolish those barriers. Once you’ve treated your neurons, faced your trauma, and begun healing brain injury grief, then you can visualize the person you want to be.

When I gave up visualizing and shed the guilt of self-fulfilling prophecy talk, I wrote. Writing connects me with you and eases the aloneness.

I began my brain injury writings with my memoir Concussion Is Brain Injury. I revised it substantially five years later, subtitling it, “Treating the Neurons and Me.” That netted me an invitation to write a blog on brain injury for Psychology Today. Then when the pandemic hit, it freed up enough of my energy to create a website on what brain injury is, appropriate diagnostics, and effective treatments. But one piece remained missing: healing the grief and finding the wherewithal to pursue treatments that heal. The medical system does neither. I hope this book will fill in that gap, make you feel connected with others in this world and less alone, and give you the emotional courage to go forth and find treatments that will regenerate your broken neurons. May these three resources of memoir, brain injury website, and this book help you find a life you love.

What Is Brain Injury? A Synopsis.

Brain injury can happen from any cause that damages brain tissue. Since the brain controls everything, anything and everything can be injured.

What does that include? In a nutshell, brain injury can disrupt your mobility, emotions, thinking, speaking and listening, anger, body’s metabolism, etc. etc.

Neurons

Neurons are the basic cells that make up our brain. Bundled together, they form neural networks. Neurons talk to each other to make the brain function. No talking, no function. An axon, like an electrical wire, connects the two ends of a neuron. Electrical impulses pulse down the axon and tell the neuron’s Medusa end to stream out neurotransmitters. Adjacent neurons receive those neurotransmitters, which trigger a pulse down the next neurons’ axons. That is how they communicate. Some axons are short; long ones cross the brain from one side to another. They likely connect far-apart functions like hearing with thinking.

Then an injury happens; those long axons break; suddenly those far-apart areas become deaf to each other. Hearing a sentence, for example, doesn’t lead to immediate thought about it. Instead, thought appears after the ears pulse the message through a roundabout route of neurons with shorter axons. Like a slow telephone tag. Things get a little mixed up taking that slower route. To regain immediate thought, the brain has to regrow those longer axons and regenerate dead and broken neurons. But how?

Microglia

Microglia are cute little cells that maintain neurons, keeping them humming those pulses along their axons. They ensure neurotransmitters stream out and are received by the next neurons in the neural network. They also sweep out bad proteins and eat detritus. Frankly, I couldn’t figure out what happened to what they eat. Does it get pooped out? Turned into energy? My research didn’t turn up a straightforward explanation about their micro-digestive systems when they gobble up what they see as trash.

When an injury happens, microglia turn mean….

Who Will Comfort the Adults?

This book is for you, who, like me, have lost innocence and experienced abandonment. You who find the grind of your reality almost beyond enduring yet don’t know how to get hold of treatments that’ll heal your injured neurons.