Suburban PTSD

 I just woke up with some kind of dream about when I was 12 years old.

Now I’m going to give you a small story about PTSD, TBI (traumatic brain injury) and me.

October 12, 1980 something I was 12.

The day is frozen in detail in my sometimes very exacting photographic memory.

  I will pick up the day at 2 pm. 

I got into the car with my mom and older brother. It was a white 1981 Chevrolet Malibu. Four doors, white, dark red plush  exterior. 

My mother was wearing a pair of orange stretchy pants, a white shirt with a matching orange vest that day. My brother had on  light blue jeans and a “Stray Cats” t shirt and sneakers.

We drove to the “Busy Bee” indoor flea market in Massapequa, the town where we lived in.

Up and down the aisles we walked, my mother was interested in looking at rope gold chain necklaces.

She bought me a sweater. I was thrilled by this garment. It was a beige cable sweater with bands of teal and muted pink stripes. Betwixt each  color stripe was a thin band of black. I had never been permitted to wear anything black before.

“Nice girls don’t wear black”, was the reason I was given. So this sweater blew my pre pubescent mind! I could wear something with black in it. This is really happening.

I also got a pair of white “capezio” shoes, which were all the rage in my seventh grade class.  

The final wonderful thing was my mom bought me a “chip which” two chocolate chip cookies filled with vanilla ice cream, then rolled in chocolate chips.

 My mom then ogled a gold charm, in a jewelry tray.

As soon as we were home I excitedly tried on my new sweater with the thin black bands, with a pair of teal pants. I tied my new white shoes.

Full of excitement, I pranced through the living room to proudly show my mother my outfit.

   I was nearly at the kitchen, two feet from it in the expansive living room, replete with a thick orange layer of carpeting.

I felt like my head was just sliced through with a knife. It was excruciating,and terrifying and I couldn’t see clearly.

I screamed. My mom yelled then. “Shah! I’m on the phone with Mrs Goldberg,”  she called out  sternly with a raised voice.

I fell flatly into my face, unable to speak just  utter  guttural sounds.

 This is where it starts becoming less of a picture in my mind, and more of colors then nothingness. 

I do see my mom call a local family friend and physician sounding very alarmed about me. His name was Dr Gensler.

I do recall his Cadillac pulling up to our house, and I vomited all over its pristine back seat. I felt really bad about that.

 I do not remember  much  after that, it’s  mostly a black hole. Until I’m in an ambulance. I can’t see.  I really don’t hear anything. I just scream over and over,”Mommy Daddy, hot hot hot!”  It’s words from a book I had read “Audrey Rose”.  It was about a little girl that died in a fire in her past life.

It was like my brain was caught on those words, I didn’t know any other words. I usually would see words in my head. Front to back letters, then back to front.

Now there was just this one sentence, and I wasn’t sure what it meant. I did know there was a doctor in the ambulance, his name was Stephen E Newman.  I don’t know how or why I knew he was there or what his name was.

Now let me sum up what happened. I was first taken to Brunswick Hospital in Amityville NY, the E/R. I don’t remember any of that.

The hospital deduced I had an aneurysm, and needed to be transported to North Shore Hospital in Manhasset NY for surgery.

At the second hospital a CT showed three blood clots in the right side of my neck, one being in the carotid artery.  Clinical MRI’s were not available in most places at this time in history.

This was a  massive stroke times 3, at the age of 12.

 This day replays every morning the moment I awaken. Decades later, I wake up realizing I can’t feel half my face, or my arm and left side.

Maybe if I were born that way it would be something I experienced as my “normal”.

  I get out of bed, and feel unstable like I’m going to fall. I always feel like I’m off balance. I try my best not to fall, and in general I don’t. Though I do more times than the average bear I’m sure.

I woke up now and lived this day. Then I realized some new thoughts.

I recall when I was unconscious, my doctor saying I’d never walk again most likely. I recall hearing about my severe brain damage. That my IQ was permanently going to be quite low.

I  did not remember how to read, write,  or dress myself. Yet two months later I was in school.

In school not knowing how to read or write. I know now that a brain injury at that age, (under 14)  is different than any age after. The brain rewires itself, and a person can in some respects have a very solid recovery. 

However, it hadn’t happened yet. I couldn’t retain anything or understand everything and I am surrounded by kids making fun of me.

I felt like I was thrown to wolves.  

Every day I asked my parents to take me out of school, to deaf ears.

My days of being excited about shoes and clothes were long gone. I was in school with absolutely zero control of my bladder, didn’t have the ability to understand or communicate very well, and learn things?

(So this was how I transitioned to being a teenager.)

I realized that in modern times, I might have gone to a rehab, and had speech therapy, other therapies  and a chance to actually have some semblance of a recovery.  

I recovered slowly over time, but lost a lot. 

Still,  I’m grateful I’ve made it to now.