MTBI Rehabilitation: The Patient's Perspective

A useful article for those who are putting their lives back together after medical error.

MTBI Rehabilitation: The Patient's Perspective
by
Constance Miller, MA
October 27, 1998

A Presentation made to the
Consensus Development Conference on
Rehabilitation of Persons with Traumatic Brain Injury
National Institutes of Health
Bethesda, MD

My interest in Mild Traumatic Brain Injury, MTBI, grew out of my own MTBI in a 1982 car accident. Prior to that life changing event I enjoyed a full, rich lifestyle that included women's rights and health care advocacy as well as a brief career as a university professor.

On that fateful day in 1982, I bumped my head in a car crash and my world turned upside down. When I came to I felt as though I had been disembodied, disconnected from myself and my past. The sensation was one of being outside of my body; viewing myself from afar. It was as though my head was in the clouds and my feet were planted in some strange yet familiar place.

There were blank spots in my memory and gaps in my consciousness. Words eluded me and my thoughts were frequently out of control. Sounds were muffled and sometimes irritating, and worst of all, nothing made sense. I thought to myself, this is spooky, suddenly for some unknown reason the world had become a strange and scary place.

Instinctually, I felt that something was very wrong although I was hard pressed to get others to confirm my impressions. I desperately needed answers. Much to my horror, the answers that were offered were the wrong answers. It did not take long for me to realize that my very life was at stake. In the blink of an eye I had been transformed from a vital, mid-career professional to one of the undead.

Essentially, life as I had known it no longer existed for me. I had become a mere shadow of my former self. Yet something in myself propelled me onward as I launched into the task of creating a new self and a new identity out of the wreckage of my life. Fortunately, my pre-injury accomplishments enabled me to unlock the mystery of MTBI, and create a new life for myself.

I was relieved to find that the answers to the mysteries of MTBI were known to medical science. I applied what I learned to restoring myself and to selecting and educating my doctors and lawyers. Then, I put everything into a self-help guide called From The Ashes. Then I founded the Head Injury Hotline to advise people on the syndrome, on good care providers, on legal options, and on social and career services available to them.

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