There is nothing wrong with this lady’s head (it’s official)

Liz Breslin

A year almost to the day from getting concussed and it seems safe enough to talk about it in the past tense. “She was SO WEIRD. Like she’d ask things and ask them again, like, all the time.” So say the kids to visitors over the dinner table.

“You were so weird, like you were there but nothing joined up inside.” So say friends at work, who I thought I’d done a good enough job fooling. Head up, eyes down, go straight, smile. I was so weird. Weird. Wired. Rewired. Caged in on autopilot. Wouldn’t be told or slowed; wouldn’t sit; so, so tired.

There is nothing wrong with this lady’s head.”

It’s written in black on white, just like that, on hospital-headed paper, so of course this statement has the aura of fact. It’s difficult to tell what’s going on with a TBI.* And you can’t use an MRI or a CAT scan to check for CTE; that can only be verified when you’re dead.* You might try TRE to release the trauma you’re holding or Google to help with the TLAs.* But nothing else. Don’t Google anything else at all.  Especially not symptoms or hopeful cures.

There is nothing wrong with this lady’s head.”

Have you tried frankincense or a chakra cleanse? Do you know your self is more than your body and your mind? Have you seen The Crash Reel? Do you wear a helmet? Did you? Think about the stats before you … I had a friend once who… I knew a guy…

There is nothing wrong with this lady’s head.”

I’ve had the checks and the checklists and the physio and the doctoring and the consultant in the branded car and the important special guy. I’ve gone from broken to fixed with the right ticks ticked but I know it’s not all right in my head. It’s holding a shadow of itself inside. I hear a pop-click almost every time I turn my neck and my right ear has the constant radial dumbness of a cold soldered burn. I still like wearing sunglasses all the time. Last week I hyperventi-cried because I was on the trampoline and most of me wanted to try and do a cringingly basic flip thing but a black hole part of me wouldn’t comply. But these are not the kind of observations you can measure out under a hospital heading.

There is nothing wrong with this lady’s head.”

I’ve been meditating on what that might mean.

---

Liz Breslin: Liz lives in Hawea Flat, New Zealand and writes poems, plays, stories and articles as well as a fortnightly column for the Otago Daily Times. Liz’s first collection of poems, Alzheimer’s and a spoon, was published by Otago University Press in 2017. Her website is www.lizbreslin.com

This is the second part of Liz Breslin’s ongoing diary of a concussion. Read the first part: Diary of a Concussion
Read the third part: Who is telling the story here?
Read other articles about concussion and TBI on Corpus here.

*TBI: Traumatic Brain Injury
*MRI: Magnetic Resonance Imaging
*CAT: Computerised Tomography Scan
*CTE: Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy
*TRE: Tension, Stress and Trauma Release
*TLA: Three-letter Acronym

---