space cowboys

The body heals pretty fast but no matter how much healing that has gone into making me the Mike I am now, I STILL have a SEVERE TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY and healing is still a VERY SLOW process. Through this blog I am able to express my frustrations, and inform and educate about the devastating after effects of an injury to the brain. My life changing experience that is chronicled on these pages may serve as a window to one of the effects of one bad decision to drive after drinking.

I can’t say that if I had an opportunity to get my old life back,  that I would want to take it all back.  I don’t know. The gain that has come out of this has been so magnificent and miraculous that it would be difficult to measure the pros and cons of never having had this experience. Yet, the day to day drudgery of this verses that makes it difficult to quantify because one could never imagine, we don’t really think about the possibility of such an event. Every person’s life is different, every brain injury is different and did I EVER think that my life would be turned upside down when I was having the time of my life? No, no one does but one of my hopes now is that when you are at “I think I’m ok to drive”, think of me and DON’T. It is my hope that when you interact with someone who has suffered an injury to their brain, that you open your mind to understand the difficulty of trying to get through life with a horrible head cold that doesn’t go away. Think about having the flu and being really sick and how you’re tired, sluggish and it’s difficult to do just about anything… everything seems to take longer to process because you just can’t think clearly. Well, that’s a fraction of what it is like to walk around with only parts of your brain working.

I am faced with the reality of everything being changed and different and it seems obvious to me and like I shouldn’t have to explain but obviously I do. So, I talk a big game and come on, you have to know it’s a coping mechanism. I have to feel that I can do anything I put my mind to and I can. The problem is, my mind is working on a part time basis and to do anything I put my mind to, it has to be up to full time speed. The reality is too difficult to face all the time and honestly, I don’t want to face that I can’t do what I could do. But I still CAN do anything if given the opportunity…I don’t know…how do you put limits on yourself? I guess I just don’t know how to do that. I don’t think I want to learn how to that…yet.

I can’t think this way on a daily basis but there are days when I can see and understand more clearly. So, today looks clear: I imagine it like our solar system like planets orbiting the sun, the  closer ones orbit faster, the ones further away take much longer to orbit and that’s where I am. My closest friends doing it BIG now it’s like they are on Mercury – fast days speeding forward…everyone else seems to me, to be on Earth having regular days but I am like Jupiter…not even Earth, I’m further back than earth. The people on Earth are going about their day, and their days are probably awesome. I realize there are people on Earth that have it a lot worse than me in some ways but they might still be progressing in life at a normal pace, maybe some aren’t.  I was used to moving at sonic speed (back on Mercury in this case) and my people are still moving at that pace. Here I am on Jupiter and Jupiter revolves around the sun (life) much slooooower than Mercury and because Mercury is closer to the sun, and I am looking out at it, I can see that Mercury is moving on and moving faster and there’s nothing I can do being stuck on Jupiter except acknowledge that they NEED to move on and it’s GOOD that they’re moving on because they can continue to grow our dream. I can see that even the people on Earth are moving on and moving forward. So how did I get here and why does it feel like Jupiter?

I feel like I got banished to Jupiter because of the reckless life I was living and it’s not as much fun here on this crusty old planet. I still want to be on Mercury and move at Mercury’s pace but I am forced by the laws of nature to abide by the limits of an injured brain. And that is my life now. I don’t like it but I have to make the best of it. The ugly truth is, I will never be a Mecurian again but hopefully I will become an Earthling again. From some perspectives it may seem that Jupiter isn’t moving at all or isn’t moving near as fast but in actuality it is moving just as fast and covering more ground and making gigantic strides. The ground Jupiter covers is larger (the brain injury) so it’s making much larger gains. But when your brain moves at the speed of Jupiter; Mercury and Earth seem to only move further away…the progress on Jupiter is barely noticeable in comparison. It’s dark and cold here on Jupiter but there is life. Don’t get me wrong, I am thankful for my life and continued progress but I fight to breathe with the much thicker air on Jupiter, after all, I am a Mercurian.

Still pushing the limits from here on Jupiter and keeping hope alive.

Mike