Traumatic Brain Injury Lawyers

SCOTT, I AM AT MY WIT’S END.

 This is one of the most common phrases uttered by our traumatic brain injury clients and/or their spouses. The dialogue below is also, unfortunately, all too common. If you are living with someone who has suffered a traumatic brain injury, or you have suffered one, the following may sound familiar:

I have tried everything. I feel like I am living with my grandfather when we first started to worry about him having Alzheimer’s. Look, this is him calling right now. How much do you want to bet he is asking what time Ryan’s baseball practice ends?

“Hey sweetie, what’s going on? Ten-Thirty. It is on your phone calendar and remind me app. Alright, I will see you in a little while.”
Here is what I really don’t get, he still remembers things I don’t. He can tell you where he saw me the first time and what I was wearing. We will hear a song, and he can tell you a story about he and his friends when that song was on in the background. He even remembers every kid’s name in the high school football photo from his yearbook. But if I ask him to go grab something from the store, I know there is a better than 50% chance I will be getting a phone call asking me what it was that I needed again.

I feel like I now have one and a half kids and a half of a husband. Don’t get me wrong, I love him with all of my heart and will love him until the day I die. I just need to vent to someone who understands. It has been over two years. Our friends tell me I am crazy, but they don’t see what I do on a daily basis. His friends at work laugh at him and tell him he has a crummy memory, but they don’t think much of it. He has gotten to where he hides it so well. I don’t know if it is just because I am around him all the time or if I have just become so sensitive to it, but I can tell he is just not the same person as before the brain injury.

And the headaches…my gosh the headaches. They are so unpredictable at times. When he is at home and they start to come on, he can take his medicine and that usually helps them from becoming too bad. When he is at work though, he has to just fight through it. The medicine makes him tired and numbs his mind.

I get so frustrated. He gets so frustrated. We had our fights before the crash, but now I feel like we fight a lot more and about completely different stuff. Thankfully, he understands what is going on and doesn’t hold my frustrations against me. Some days, he will just apologize to me and tell me how hard he knows this is for me. I see the tears in his eyes, and it just breaks my heart.