What’s in a Name? An Injured Brain is an Injured Brain

An Art of Wellness POV
 

We  call them TBI’s (traumatic brain injury.)  ABI’s (Acquired Brain Injury.)  Few people are calling what my brain was injured by what it should be called--CBI’s: Chemical Brain Injuries. A lot of people have those without even knowing it.

We should just call them BI’s. Brain Injuries. 

Whatever event injured a brain--the injured brain malfunctions. 

The brain is central control--and when central control’s in trouble--so's the rest of you.

Brain injuries cause physical short-circuits and disabilities. Mental ones. Emotional ones. They can cause cognitive problems, short-or long-term memory loss, the inability to "find things in your brain" you know you know, do “normal” things you used to be good at, inability to recognize faces--whatever the myriad differences of experience that people with Brain Injuries are having--they’re the same kind of hell.

It’s good we’re starting to talk about brain injuries. Brain injuries are the “signature injury” of our present wars. So many veterans are now suffering from them we HAVE to help, we HAVE to talk about them. 

300,000-plus young people disabled--"forever?" What'll that cost our country that's already broke? In medical and disability costs--but more--in our HUMAN RESOURCES?

We should be talking more talk about HEALING brain injuries instead of all these identifications, diagnoses, and dooming people to think “forever.”  

We should be focusing on healing and fixing people more than the study of the “how’s” and “why’s” of the things that are going wrong. 

When it comes to Brain Injuries--the wounds and scars are not visible.  The effects are terrifying and devastating and turn lives upside-down. But people can’t SEE brain injuries--the way they can see if you’re an amputee, in a wheelchair, a brace, a cast--or blind--like I was. Notice I say WAS. For more than 5 years. I’m not any more.

When it happened to me--in 1998--mainstream medicine believed “brain cells don’t regenerate, brain injuries don’t heal.”  I got that lecture from my father-the-professor-of-pathology when I was a teen-ager, as he sliced up real brains and prepared slides for an upcoming lecture. It didn’t make sense to me then--I asked: “If every other organ in the body has cells that can regenerate--why NOT the brain? Are you sure? Do you KNOW?” He replied “There is a lot about the body medical science does not yet know.” That was in the mid-1970’s. 

Two years after I was told “it’s permanent” and I’d “never get better,” SCIENCE did one of those 180’s medicine often does: “We USED to think...but NOW we KNOW.”  They discovered brain cells DO regenerate. Good thing I’d already been working on getting mine to do just that for two years by then. I could have accepted--like the MD’s advised me to--and given up. I could have been drugged and disabled and in a board and care.

I was on my own dealing with healing my injured brain. I was lucky. I had more education on medicine than most. I was dancer and artist and a creative out-of-the-box thinker who’d studied Human Potential, Human Development and Alternative Medicine for years.  I’d been involved in the fields of Psychology, the Arts, and Peak Performance--what a human being CAN do and CAN achieve--for decades when it happened to me. 

All the doctors said I’d never get better again and wanted to treat the many diagnoses and misdiagnoses for the many bad symptoms caused by my brain injuries with drugs.  

Just like they’re doing today. Drugs can control symptoms but they don’t FIX the cause.

And they have so many side-effects--including suicidal behaviors--but they sure make a profit for Pharma.

As a doctor’s daughter--I KNEW THAT. Most people think the “medications” are helping them. I understood the concept of treating the symptom and--as my father told me when I asked--"Isn't that just killing the messenger?"--"Well if treating the symptom doesn't work--then we have to treat more aggressively." I knew how to do research and find the cutting-edge Science that was more to my liking--non-invasive and geared to FIX the injuries and help my body and brain HEAL. I knew how to find the Alternative Medicine and the Natural Healing solutions to help my Body-Mind heal. My Spirit led the way. 

Coming back from brain injury isn’t easy. But it’s possible, it’s achievable and it can be done. I DID IT. 

We just have to change our thinking and our culture from the re-active and profitable diagnosis and treatment of “permanent-rest-of-your-life-but-manageable” chronic disease and disability to the pro-active. 

And bring back that old-fashioned “CAN-DO” attitude America USED to be famous for.