Eighteen Months after the Accident
(Neuro) Psychologist Number Two: More interviews and tests—PTSD and depression inventories; IQ, Rorschach, and other memory tests; and tests for cognitive and physical reactions—ten hours’ worth that spanned two days to determine if I had sustained brain trauma in the car accident.
Every time I heard myself say “I don’t know” or “I can’t remember,” I felt more and more stupid. Throughout the testing, I never blamed the accident or young man who caused it, I just got angry with myself. He might have been responsible for messing up my body, but not my mind. I was in control of it. Or at least I wanted to be.
The results were less than surprising this time, too.
Diagnosis Number Two, pretty much the same as before:
“Aimee demonstrates a pattern of recovery that is consistent with recovery patterns of traumatic brain injury. She is also suffering from depression, as well as underlying anger and grief. She is guarded, anxious, and depressed, and she also suffers from social avoidance, left foot pain, memory problems, and suicidal ideation. She has feelings of powerlessness, and projective stories or drawings reveal an individual who is frustrated and overwhelmed. When faced with difficulty she wants to retreat. She also has some anger and guilt toward the driver who died.”
Recommendation: psychotherapy and drug intervention for “neuroemotional” responses.
Traumatic brain injury. Well, I had suspected. My memory had turned to jelly, it seemed, especially my recent, short-term memory.
A second opinion, same diagnosis: I was broken. But this doctor’s analysis also pointed out that recovery—I had sustained a closed-head brain injury—was happening and would continue with time. Slowly.
An extensive (and overwhelming, aligning with Diagnosis Number Two) list of psychotherapists in my area was provided, but none of the names was familiar, and I had no idea where to start. How do you choose a name from a lengthy list of unknown professionals knowing you will be sharing your innermost thoughts, talking about something you really don’t want to, while exposing your soul? And all after a year and a half of way too many other medical appointments?
I didn’t want to hop from doctor to doctor trying to find a fit.
So, I just didn’t choose. I had every intention of getting to it at some point. I would seek out therapy eventually.
• • •
When the other driver’s insurance company still hadn’t offered a settlement amount, my attorney filed a lawsuit. A jury would figure it out.
I panicked. And then I cried. Maybe I did both at the same time.
Under no circumstances did I want to go to court. I begged him to work hard to settle before the trial date. I was anxious thinking about showing my scars. Maybe even more so about facing Zach’s parents—they had lost their son, after all—until my lawyer promised he would do all he could to resolve it before then.
He reminded me that the county in which I lived was small and that I was a highly respected teacher who had taught in the area for almost twenty years. When I told him the presiding judge had been my divorce lawyer and the father of two former students of mine, he told me to breathe easy. Though this information wouldn’t affect the case, he was sure it would make the opposing side cooperate more quickly, and he was right.
By spring 2012, the lawsuit hearing was postponed and a date for mediation was set. There would be no courtroom hearing at all. What a relief.
Meanwhile, I started writing again using the daily prompts given to my seniors in English class. I didn’t write much, and I wasn’t that great at it, but it was helping.
In fact, for the English teacher who also aspired to be a writer one day, it was turning into more than just a healthy hobby. When I found out that an area college offered a master’s in creative writing, I was so excited, I signed up for the summer residency right away. I had always wanted to earn my master’s, just not in education. This would be a perfect fit.
“What will you write about for your thesis?” Mom asked when I told her I was going back to grad school.
“The accident and what happened to me.”
She looked puzzled and sounded almost angry when she asked, “Why in the world would you want to write about that when you lived it? You tell me all the time you don’t want to talk about, so why relive it?”
Yes, I was sick of telling the story of what had happened to me.
I had repeated it to every doctor, every dentist, every psychologist, and every attorney I saw over a span of two years, and trust me, there were a lot.
It always got the same embarrassing reaction, too.
I was almost killed in a car accident. I was recovering from a heart attack that had happened five months earlier.
Disbelief: “Wow.”
Yes, a heart attack. Yes, age forty-one. I know, crazy. It was stress. I had just told my husband of eighteen years that I wanted a divorce.
Pity: “That’s horrible,” or “I’m so sorry.”
And then a shrug or pat on the hand with: “Well, you look great anyway.”
I’d had two brushes with death, made it through the trifecta of shit, and I “looked great anyway.”
So they said.
I never knew how to respond to that—Thank you?—so I just didn’t say anything.
No one would understand anyway. My life had become a gloomy, tired documentary about trauma rehabilitation that most moviegoers would have walked out of, I was sure, and talking about it wasn’t helping. I was just sharing the same clips over and over, and getting the same, unhelpful responses.
I knew I needed to make some sense of it all, though, because questions still haunted me: What happened to me? Why am I still alive? And, who am I now?
I resolved to do what I’ve always done when I wanted to organize my thoughts or solve a problem in my head. I would write about it. I could create a meaningful, enduring record of what happened to me and earn my master’s at the same time. And maybe I’d find some peace in the process.
It couldn’t hurt to try.
IV
“And then her heart changed, or at least she understood it; and the winter passed, and the sun shone upon her.”
~J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•