The book Ghost In My Brain arrived yesterday. The following quote is from the forward:

By the time high functioning individuals with post-traumatic head injury notice that their memories are not what they used to be, or that they have difficulty thinking through a problem they could once have easily solved, massive brain damage has occurred on a microscopic level. Because their symptoms are medically unverifiable and therefore untreatable, they are usually dismissed as the walking wounded, destined to suffer the pain, frustration, and humiliation of not knowing how much longer their condition will last or how much worse it will become.

Thrilling opening.

Unbearable opening.

Reading came to an abrupt halt with this paragraph. There was a felt need for an immediate antidote. I searched for a jokey email previously sent to a friend.

The quoted paragraph is the unvarnished truth. It is exactly what I do not want to hear. All of my fight comes from the unstated belief that effort will pay dividends, that I will somehow bulldoze my way to recovery through sheer force of will.

I do not want to acknowledge the injury. I do not wish to grant it authority over me. I do not wish to surrender to it. I refuse to accept it. If something can be done then it must be possible for it to be undone.

I find it interesting that when I become emotionally stressed, my response is to resort to “writing my way out of difficulty.” So I soothe myself with a blog post. I am also casting about for some legal type letter I can write, a means of pushing back against the indifference shown by the health care community in Québec, by the insurance company, by Dr. X.