On the morning of November 13, 2018, I looked both ways before crossing the street as I entered a pedestrian crosswalk on my two-block walk to work. My memory gets dodgy from here but my brain still holds a few snippets: a quarter of the way across the street I watched the fender of an SUV hit my knee, I slammed onto its hood, and then my head quickly hit the pavement. Hard. I was rushed to the hospital, put in a medically-induced coma, and, when I came to in the ICU at Portsmouth Regional Hospital, was told my 34-year-old body was not how I last remembered it. I’ll spare you the details of the insane list of diagnoses I was given- some knee, neck, and brain-related- but the most important one to know about is that I had an acute subdural hematoma.

I am a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother, and a business owner. It has taken a long time to even begin to process the accident (and may take my whole life) but, looking at my life and how close I was to slipping away lends serious perspective. During the months after my accident, I struggled with feelings of loneliness and depression and did not realize at the time that they were direct results of my brain injury. If I can help others feel less alone during their recovery journey, I feel that some good will have come from the trauma that changed my life.

 

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