Living with a Minor Brain Injury

I was very fortunate. The accident that caused my brain injury wreaked damage that even I consider to be relatively minor. That’s saying a lot. It is very hard for anyone with brain injury related cognitive impairment to view their situation as anything less than devastating, but I am working on an objective view of my situation, and through that objective view one thing is begrudgingly clear: I skated.

Having experienced a simultaneously catastrophic and insignificant electrical injury when I was six years old, my medical chart is a hodge podge of questions and quirks. When a person suffers an electrical injury, there is are a nearly unlimited number of combinations of potential ramifications possible as an outcome. The human body is made up of approximately 70% water, and the brain itself is even higher than that , comprised of approximately 75% water. Water is an excellent conductor for electricity, and the damage caused by the introduction of electric current to the system can be as minor as a small burn to the outer layers skin to major events like cardiac arrest, coma, and death.

My experience was believed to have inflicted a very fortunately minor amount of damage to my 35 lb body, but as years progressed, we discovered that the long term consequences of the accident were far more involved. Peripheral neuropathy was diagnosed to explain the numbness, lack of sensitivity and “dead” feelings that I experienced in my arms, legs, hands and feet. My migraines, although not an unusual problem, set in in adolescence and are debilitating in their severity. Persistent arm and wrist pain lead to the discovery of bilateral, non-repetitive-stress-related Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, which was caused by the passage of the current through my arms. A persistent state of dizziness was after many years of investigation and frustration discovered to be the result of a missed problem with the electrical conduction system of my heart, called Short PR Syndrome, which causes arrhythmias.