April Donovan

I’m going to tell my wild and weird story to raise awareness for Brain Injury, as March is Brain Injury Awareness month.

I got my brain injury by missing a turn in a tunnel in Austria, and crashing headlong into the tunnel wall. That’s how I got my brain injury. I was on a 3-week dual sport motorcycle trip to Morocco. I wrote the travel itinerary for our group of 5 riders. On the first day of our ride from Kleinwalsertal, Austria, we were 5 bikes weaving in and out of traffic in a rainstorm. I was riding a Yamaha Tenere 700, which I totalled into the tunnel wall when the tunnel turned and I did not. I was rescued by helicopter to Innsbruck, Austria, where I was in a coma for 10 days. I was hospitalized for a month, where I was injured to the point that I had to relearn how to use a spoon. As you can see, I’ve come a long way, but the hard part is that even though I look normal on the outside, I’m not normal and I’m not the same person who I was before September 23, 2018, when I suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury.

Through my brain injury recovery over the last almost 7 years, I’ve come into contact with a lot of brain injured people. We’ve all had very different life experiences and very different accidents that caused our brain injury, but we all experience similar symptoms and life problems.

One of my counterparts in long-term, intensive therapy was a roofer who fell off a 4-story building at work one day. Another guy was the CFO of a company, had a massive stroke and lost his ability to speak. One gentleman was a construction foreman who had a heart attack from Covid and oxygen deprivation caused his brain injury. A 19-year-old girl was out for a jog and got hit by a car.

The most important thing to know about brain injury is that survivors have a hidden disability.

Many brain injury symptoms, like vision problems, can be invisible to others—even doctors and therapists—which makes it even more challenging to diagnose and manage.

My visual memory is weak. It’s very easy for me to get lost in a new place. I used to have photo albums on my phone, of hallways, doors and elevators, so I could retrace my steps. It’s hard for me to follow conversations and I repeat myself a lot.

I lack depth perception, so when I stand at the top of a flight of stairs and look down, I don’t see what you see. I step down and have to trust that the world works the way it always has. I put one foot in front of the other with confidence, knowing that the next step is about 5 inches lower than the tape along the edges of the stairs.

Because my eyes don’t work together, each eye is sending a different message to my brain, which creates massive fatigue. My day is shorter than your day.

24/7, I have double vision in my right periphery, and I always will. Double vision is disconcerting and makes me feel nauseous.

The biggest issue that resulted from my TBI is 3PD. 3PD is also known as PPPD, which stands for Persistent Postural Perceptual Dizziness.

Persistent—The symptoms are always there.
Postural—The symptoms worsen when I’m upright or moving. I feel better if I never get out of bed.
Perceptual—I feel it, but it’s not obvious to others.
Dizziness—This describes the sensation. It’s like that floating feeling you get when you’ve had a glass of wine on an empty stomach.

PPPD, or 3PD, is a mouthful, but essentially, it’s a chronic condition where your brain doesn’t trust the signals it’s getting from your inner ear. This leads to feelings of dizziness, unsteadiness, and non-spinning vertigo that just won’t quit.

Living day to day with 3PD and double vision makes for a challenging quality of life.

The worst place I have to go with 3PD is the grocery store because of visual complexity. I don’t do well at all in the hardware store, I feel much better in the pillow store.
Textured carpet or wallpaper is hard for me to look at. So hotels are a challenge. Sometimes, I see things that I know aren’t there in my right periphery. Because, if your brain can’t understand something, it just fills in with whatever extra you have lying around. It’s a fabricated memory or detail to fill the gap, called confabulation

After my accident, I wanted to know when I would be back at work, sitting at my desk, being the boss of my advertising agency. What no one could tell me, that I had to find out for myself through years of intensive therapy, is that I would never be back at my job. I could never do that job again and I never will.

My memory starts about 6 months after my accident, which is after I already signed away my ownership of my business. Due to the “hidden” nature of a brain injury, people like me, may be perceived as lazy, exaggerating symptoms, or not trying hard enough.

My brain injury support group, Brain Injury Connections Northwest is great for perspective. A number of people in my group can’t walk or talk. I understand that there are levels to disability as I was recently denied in my application for Social Security Disability.

I think the second most important thing to know about brain injury is that they are cumulative, meaning, they add up. Data shows that people who have one brain injury are significantly more likely to have another brain injury. This is attributed to factors like impaired coordination and balance, making people like me more susceptible to subsequent head trauma. Also, personality type, being a risk taker.

Prior brain injury predisposes you to neurodegenerative diseases and other conditions, including:
▶ Parkinson’s disease
▶ Stroke
▶ Alzheimer’s
▶ Chronic pain
▶ Depression

My brain injury journey is a struggle to find quality of life.
My brain injury journey is finding my ability to support myself financially.
I’m finding my new path that reduces visual tasks.

My purpose in telling this story is to share what makes life now harder than life before my brain injury to inspire you to protect your headpiece and be vocal about helmet safety—like wearing one to begin with, then making sure your helmet properly fits your head to protect your brain in an accident.

3 takeaways besides wearing a properly-fit helmet:

Give the person next to you more grace in every situation in life. They might be doing their best.
If you know someone with a brain injury, share resources, like Brain Injury Connection Northwest.
If you know someone with a brain injury, try to understand that it’s a hidden disability and the person you knew before the injury is not the same person as far as abilities, limits and comfort levels.