Traumatic Brain Injury: Come introduce yourself

Lisa -- thank you for the reference to the caregiver support group. I will definitely check that out. Regarding The Body Keeps the Score, there's just so much of value in the book that I'm now telling people that every law student, every judge, every police officer, every medical student, every seminary student -- basically everybody who wants to work with people and ease their burdens -- should read it. Repeatedly. I have a shelf in my home where I put the most important books I've read in my life. This one sits on my desk.

My basic takeaways are these: (1) just how pervasive trauma is and how much it is needlessly inflicted in American society and culture; (2) that an understanding of the genesis of trauma and its effects is essential for anyone who is interested in the human experience; and (3) that we all need to be vastly more patient with one another.

I can’t know whether I’m following the right steps to introduce myself - in my experience, “am I doing this right?” is a very typical experience for people with TBI.
Stumble ahead, aye?
So.
I’m a professional artist, a painter and sculptor with work in private collections around the world, and in public collections across Britain. (I’m no good at website stuff, so I don’t have a representative profile online.)

I’m also the near-fatal part of a brutal, near-fatal head-on collision between myself in a wee compact car, and 29 tonnes of fully-laden road-grit-spreading lorry (truck), on a bright December afternoon, on a blind bend on a single-track lane, just a mile and a half from our home high in the Lammermuir Hills in Scotland’s Southern Uplands.
For reasons associated with demand for beds in the ‘centre for medical excellence’ hospital in which my face was rebuilt (77 stitches in the first round of surgery just to stabilize my features), I was sent home unconscious after a few days.
One thing they can’t do while you’re unconscious is test your cognitive functions. Two and a half years passed, through which I struggled with recovery unaided. A month after my wife threw me out of our family home because I was “useless to her”, I was tested and diagnosed with Closed Head Trauma, Axonal Stretching and Tearing.
My life was pretty comprehensively overturned. My marriage was broken, my wife did her best to separate me from our infant son, and I found I couldn’t paint - the three parts of my life that I felt defined my identity, lost.

That was then. It’s been almost 22 years, my 22-year old son and I have a great loving friendship, and I’m now in a healthy, mostly sane and fulfilling relationship with a deeply caring woman, a medical professional with whom I share a passion for singing, and more. And I can paint the paintings that I want to see, sculpt the sculptures that fulfil me.
The brain damage continues to pose difficulties, misunderstandings, and stumbling blocks; I have limitations, but I don’t feel limited.
And as a Human Book in the Human Library, I have spoken face to face with a thousand Human Library ‘readers’, answering their questions about my slowly but continually unfolding relationship with my damaged brain - because we have to have the conversations about the terror and stigma associated in the public’s perceptions with brain injury (following my diagnosis, two ‘close’ friends both declared to me that I couldn’t have brain damage, I wasn’t sitting in the corner dribbling).

This will sit as a sketch of me.

Hey! I was involved in a head-on collision on August 15, 1987. I had to be ejected from a Datson 280 ZX with the jaws of life. I was a passenger in this vehicle and the idiot I was dating decided to go in the oncoming traffic to pass two vehicles that were talking, driving next to each other going southbound. This happened at 1:10am. I was in a coma for 9 days. I fractured my pelvis, broke a few ribs, punctured a lung, cracked a few teeth, I had the seat belt shoved into my butt on impact, needed skin grafting to repair hole. Also, a few other lacerations on my stomach becuz I was bleeding internally. On my right foot and right temple. It's been HELL!! I had 1yr of therapy. It included physio, speech, and cognitive. The Dr's told me I could never walk again. That didn't sit well with me. Yes, I struggled but pushed thru. Today, I walk, cook, drive, go to gym, all things normal people do. I struggle with remembering stuff tho. I have short term memory problem.
I have notes everywhere, lol.
I keep an agenda book. Some days are harder but I manage. I get by!
So, TBI isn't easy to deal with but if u can get past the limitations u are a true warrior!