Joshua Lattuada
If I had to summarize my brain injury journey in one word, it would be unfinished — not because my trauma defined me, but because my recovery never stopped where others expected it to end.
When I was nine years old, my life changed in the span of a single moment. I was hit by a car while crossing the street. The impact fractured my skull in two places, broke my left leg, my right collarbone, six ribs, and caused a Severe Traumatic Brain Injury to my frontal and occipital lobes. I was unconscious before I even hit the ground. Doctors told my parents to prepare for the worst, and for two weeks, I remained in a coma — silent, still, suspended between possibility and finality.
When I finally opened my eyes, the relief on my parents’ faces was followed by a devastating truth: Even though I had survived, the life everyone imagined for me had ended.
The prognosis was blunt and absolute. I would never return to general education. I would never graduate high school. I would never drive, hold a job, or live independently. Everything about my future was described in terms of limits. “This is as far as he will go,” one doctor said. “He won’t progress beyond this.”
Three weeks after waking up, I was released from the hospital. Insurance declared that I had reached the “maximum extent” of my recovery and refused to cover any further rehabilitation. My parents were left facing a future in which the world had written their son off — and they refused to accept it.
They spent the next several years paying out-of-pocket for thousands of hours of therapy. They sacrificed financially, emotionally, and physically. They believed in a version of me that no one else saw yet. Looking back, I think that was the first moment I learned what resilience looks like: not heroic effort, not dramatic transformation, but a stubborn refusal to stop trying.
Recovery after a TBI doesn’t follow a straight line. Mine looked more like scribbles — progress one day, frustration the next, long plateaus where it felt like nothing was changing, and then sudden breakthroughs that reminded me I was still capable of surprising myself. I struggled academically, socially, and emotionally. I had to relearn how to think clearly, how to organize my thoughts, and how to communicate when the right words hid behind fog.
But slowly, painfully, I climbed my way back into general education. I started passing classes people said I wouldn’t understand. I started meeting goals people told me I would never reach. I learned how to drive. I learned how to advocate for myself. And in 2017, I walked across a stage and graduated from high school — something many believed would never happen for me.
In 2023, I earned my Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology. Every milestone felt like reclaiming a piece of a life that had once been declared impossible.
The biggest misconception people have about brain injury survivors is that recovery is either miraculous or nonexistent. They imagine someone waking up healed, or they assume that whoever you are six months post-injury is who you’ll be forever. But the truth is quieter and more complicated: recovery is not a finish line — it’s a lifelong process of rewiring, adapting, learning, accepting, and continuing forward even on days when forward feels small.
Today, I am training to become a Certified Rolfer®. Bodywork changed my life. It helped reconnect parts of myself that trauma disconnected. It helped me understand my body, my structure, and my nervous system in ways that traditional therapy alone could not. And now it’s something I want to give back — a way to help others recover and believe in themselves, find relief, and rebuild trust in their bodies after injury.
If I could give advice to someone newly facing a brain injury or preparing to leave acute care, it would be this:
Do not let anyone — not a doctor, not a chart, not a prognosis — tell you where your recovery ends.
They can measure your injuries, but they cannot measure your potential. They can estimate your limits, but they cannot predict your willingness to keep doing your best. They do not know the exact moment your brain will surprise you, or the day a skill suddenly comes back, or the day you attempt something for the hundredth time and finally succeed.
Recovery is not about getting back to who you were — it’s about discovering who you still can become.
I was expected to plateau at nine years old.
I am twenty-seven now, and I am still improving.
Still growing.
Still learning.
Still proving people wrong.
Still unfinished.
