How to Make an Anchovy Peanut Butter Sandwich: Living a Life with Traumatic Brain Injury

     I don’t know how to make an anchovy peanut butter sandwich. I can’t imagine that it’s any different than a peanut butter and banana sandwich, except you sub-out the bananas for anchovies. Disgusting.

     A lot of months ago, I wrote about homelessness and the fact that we don’t have a “homeless problem,” we have a traumatic brain injury problem. According to a bunch of sources, 53% of the homeless population has a traumatic brain injury. I was shocked, too. The numbers are probably much higher. Unfortunately, not that many months later, God gave me a traumatic brain injury for Christmas (except “he” gave it to me in September). Maybe he was worried it wouldn’t get there in time, I dunno. Who am I to question God?!? 

     Here’s how it went. My husband and I flew to San Diego. We flew back from San Diego (as well as God, I blame San Diego, kind of). Maybe I hit my head getting on or off the plan. Maybe there was just too much pressure. Maybe I hit my head getting into the car, I dunno. One of the many specialists I’ve seen since my TBI explained that “it’s really easy for it to happen.” Damn it, I didn’t know that. Damn it, I wish I still didn’t. Okay, so far so good. Now I’m back from San Diego in the story.

     Fast forward to having a bad headache. It hurts. I don’t like it. I am also mildly annoyed, because I very rarely get headaches, which makes me spoiled, doesn’t it, instead of grateful that I don’t? Whatever, I’m annoyed. I wait for the headache to clear. I take Tylenol. It doesn’t go away. I keep waiting, day in, day out. I still have a headache. A week goes by. I think perhaps it’s because of the flight, like I have sinus inflammation or something. Tylenol is my new boyfriend, and we hang out a lot. He’s a shitty boyfriend: he doesn’t do anything around the house, and he leaves his dirty socks all over the floor. Oh, wait, Tylenol doesn’t wear socks. He doesn’t do anything around the house, either.

     The headache persists. I’m starting to live with it now. I pity people who have headaches all the time. I begin to realize that for 53 years of my life, I was incredibly, incredibly fortunate to not have headaches. I keep waiting for him to go away, expecting the relief– like you do when you wait for a bus, “Oh, it’ll be here any minute now.” The minutes pass, and so do the days. The bus never comes.

     Finally, I try to make an appointment with my doctor (he’s actually a physician’s assistant, but he’s excellent). Nope, he’s just moved to a different doctoring place. Besides, they can’t see me because I haven’t given them my paperwork. I pick up my paperwork, fill it out, and take it back to his new office. Now can he see me? “Sure,” the incompetent and un-nice woman at the counter tells me. In three weeks. I explain. The pain has become ridiculous (it was already ridiculous two weeks ago, but I was the idiot waiting for the bus). Can’t they do anything for me sooner? Can’t they do anything for me? The un-nice woman says she’s made an appointment for me. “Go to urgent care if you have to,” she says, flexing every teeny, anchovy sized ounce of power she wields over me. I’ll show her, I think. I go to prompt care instead of the urgent care place because it’s cleaner. It’s a drive across town, even though my husband has gotten used to shuttling me everywhere (thanks, epilepsy). We go to prompt care. (The dirty, urgent care place we didn’t go to closes soon after. Gross).

     At prompt care, I do feel a bit foolish that I “waited for the bus” so long before I went in. I get to see someone, eventually. She looks into my ears in one of those ear-looky into things that are kind of cool. She says, “Yep, I definitely see fluid in there. In both ears.” She prescribes antibiotics for me, we pick them up, and I go home, relieved and happy to be on my way to a headache free life. Ha.

     I take the first pill, and even though I don’t feel better right away, of course, I am looking forward to improving. Instead, I end up having to go to the hospital the next day, and it’s not due to an allergic reaction to antibiotics. I have had, in fact, a “brain bleed.” Traumatic Brain Injury. A TBI.

     Ah, the beauty of language. We bandy such terms about as if they are inconsequential. “Unhoused.” “TBI.” Like these are trifles. As if they are cute little nicknames. They are not cute, and they certainly are not inconsequential. Thankfully, I am not “unhoused.” Now, however, I am like “them,” the 53% with a TBI.  A TBI survivor.

     Before I went to the hospital, this is what happened: I was on the phone. I came to on the floor, if by came to I “woke up,” but only enough to yell for my husband, because I was having a seizure. I wasn’t fully without awareness. I wasn’t fully conscious, either. I knew I was having a seizure (I’ve had a lot of them before) because I could watch my hand circling around and around, slightly suspended above my leg. I was scared, more scared than I have ever been during a seizure. (Seizures are weird. You can be awake, not awake, or in between, like I was with this one.) While I was in my liminal place, he wanted to call 911, and I encouraged him to. I listened as he talked on the phone to the 911 people, listened as he talked to the paramedics when they arrived at the door, and the two folks got me on a gurney and into the ambulance. Not sure how they got me over the hump of the threshold or down the single stair in the front of the house. In retrospect, I’m sure that’s nothing compared to two-story houses. Each bump hurt, like a sadistic magician cutting through my head. Yikes. I will learn later that seizures (even for people without epilepsy) are a final symptom of TBI. The biggest symptom. Except for death. Come to think of it, death isn’t as much a symptom of TBI as it is a symptom for…life.

     I went to the hospital, my paramedic team charging through, going directly to the CT scan for my beautiful, broken brain. As an aside, there is a movie by that name. It’s pretty good, too. In my computer, I have some writing where I say, “Beautiful, broken brain,” and I wrote it first, probably a year—maybe even two—before that movie came out, so I won’t apologize, because I didn’t steal it. Two minds thought of the same three words in the same order. Sue us. (Just remember, I was first).

     Back to my hospital adventure. CT scan, vitals, all that stuff. They admit me to an ICU (I think) specifically for Neurology. I think that’s pretty neat that it’s specific to neurology. I didn’t think so at the time. I was pretty overwhelmed.

     I’m overwhelmed again, now, so I’m going to have to finish for the morning because my stamina isn’t what it once was. It’s okay, I’m not running for President, thank God. I’m coming to terms with having a brain injury, and learning about my new self. It’s weird, really weird, but at least I’m not eating anchovy peanut butter sandwiches.

~ More down the road, readers. Thanks ~