Life and Living After Acquired Brain Injury

"I don't expect her to survive the trauma," the doctor told me, and she was right. The woman I married twenty years earlier died that day, but inside her body beat the heart of a woman whose faith and determination would personify the famed Phoenix. Like that mythical bird, Beth Jameson would rise from the ashes of an acquired brain injury.

The mythical Phoenix builds a nest of myrrh twigs that then ignites into flames that fiercely engulf both the nest and the bird, reducing them to ashes. Out of those ashes comes a new bird. Some stories about the Phoenix say the new bird embalms the ashes of the old bird in an egg made of myrrh and deposits the egg in the Egyptian city of Heliopolis.

The old dies so that the new may live and prosper. The old way of doing things must die. The memories and abilities of the old must be embalmed and buried so the new may develop its potential. Giving up the old way of doing things is, perhaps, the most difficult part of having a brain injury. For many, hope is channeled toward the past as they cling to the belief that they will fully recover and be their old self once again.

Brain injury, of course, is just one arena where people cling to the old way of doing things. Any new supervisor or manager or pastor has heard the words, "Well, so and so said we could do it this way." So and So is, you guessed it, the previous supervisor or manager or pastor. How many Christians struggle with living a Christ-centered life because of the old way of doing things? It is difficult to turn away from how we once lived.

For a brain injury victim, there remain memories of the past, memories of the former life, memories of how they once performed. This person looks in the mirror and sees someone who has memory problems, cognitive problems and behavioral problems in addition to other possible physical injuries. Certainly the past looks better than the present. A soldier returning from war minus an arm or leg may truly feel the same way. It is normal to feel loss and to feel grief over something that has been lost.

It is important, however, to think of the Phoenix. There must be a point in time when the old way of doing things must be buried in a personal Heliopolis. There must be a point in time when a decision is made to develop a new life, a new way of living after suffering a traumatic loss. That new way of life will continue to be plagued by past memories, and those past memories will happen daily, several times a day, during the first few years following an event that physically injured the brain.

Those memories will trigger what Beth and I call the Cycle of Response. The Cycle begins with mental fatigue and will quickly generate a feeling of confusion caused by not being able to perform as in the past. That new performance level will cause frustration which can easily trigger behavioral issues like crying and anger. Step Four of the Cycle is guilt. A brain injured person will feel guilty because they cannot perform as in the past, and this will lead to feelings of inadequacy. The fifth, and last, stage of the Cycle is depression.

Imagine going through this several times each day, every day. There is a need, an urgent need, to wrap the old way of doing things in a mythical egg of myrrh and to bury it.

Continued on Page 2 - Learning to Live with the Cycle of Response

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