WeAreTBI.org - The Social Support Network for People Living with Traumatic Brain Injury

What Kind of Vegetable Am I?

{This story was published in  Stroke Connection Magazine, American Heart Assoc/ Amer Stroke Assoc.}

It started December 16, 2002, when I was 32 years old. I had a bleeding stroke at work, an AVM (arterio-venus malformation) burst. I didn't know about it and drove home for lunch. I lost consciousness for a bit and had an accident. I was taken back to work. I got a bad headache at my office and walked with help to the clinic.

At the clinic I stopped breathing. They took me to a hospital where they put me on a helicopter and flew me to a trauma center. There they did brain surgery to stop the bleeding. That surgery was risky, something like 30% survival. Afterwards, I was in a coma. I remember my family being told I would always be in a coma, and if I came out, I would be a vegetable.

I did come out of the coma, but couldn't talk or move, which made me appear to be a vegetable, although I could understand what was being said. I was alive, but had something in my head that could kill me at any time - from something as simple as shaking my head "no."

The AVM was large and too deep in my brain to be removed. It was just left there though the bleeding stopped. I was only able to move my left side after some therapy. I taught myself to talk. I taught myself how do things with limited movement on my non-dominant side; I was right handed but could only move my left. I taught myself how to manipulate the control on my electric wheelchair with my left hand, how to type on the computer with my left index finger, and how to write left-handed. I had worked with babies as an infant development specialist, so I already knew a lot of what to do. It was good that I could talk again, then I could tell others what had to be done. I still wondered what kind of vegetable I was, and I would ask others.

In 2004, doctors at Stanford were able to remove the AVM, and I was able to move my right side again. Since then I have been learning to use my right side and do things like typing with both hands. In therapy, I'm basically doing everything to my right side that was done to my left. Because of my infant training, I was already familiar with how to get development started. Now I just repeat what I remember what was done to my left.

As great as it was was to move my right side, the most important thing about surgery is that I no longer have that thing in my head anymore. Nobody expected this kind of recovery: What kind of vegetable can think, talk or write? I still don't know what kind of vegetable I am.