Shellie Xaiz

I acquired a TBI in May of 1998 while out on a casual bike ride. I’m not going to go into the details of the actual accident because to this day I do not remember any of it.
I was taken by ambulance to a hospital but had to be life flighted to a more equipped hospital. My boyfriend was told to call whatever family members he could and have them come to the hospital. The chaplain was brought in to talk with him as well. The doctors explained to him that IF I made it through the night (which they highly doubted) that I would be brain dead, a vegetable. I died and had to be revived twice that night and remained in a coma for four days. To everyone’s surprise, I did eventually come out of the coma. I cannot remember how many days after that I spent there, maybe two and then they let me go home.
This is where I want people to understand. Just because the doctors let me go home didn’t mean I was better in fact I was anything but better. I didn’t even know me anymore. This wasn’t only bad for me but I had an eleven year old daughter I was raising. (I know to this day she is why I fought to live!) I had no idea what I was doing, what I was supposed to do. I still don’t have a lot of my memories around this time of my life. I do remember picking myself up and trying to go back to life as close to how I remembered it. Went back to my job, went back to cosmetology school. It was like I knew in my head I wasn’t healed, I wasn’t me, but everyone around me just expected me to go on like always.
Needless to say I lost my family, they use the word crazy when they talk about me.
Knowing what I know now about brain injury and recovery I would have sought out the mental help that I needed. I didn’t even look for said help but I didn’t know where to look the information was not available as far as I could tell. I didn’t go to a neurologist but all he did was put me on antidepressants and kept upping the dose. He never provided any other information. I’m not sure if the information was really easy to find and I just didn’t look hard enough or what but I did read a lot of self help books, books on TBIs, and tried to put myself back together.
I want so much for people to understand brain injury. It’s not something you slap a cast on and it heals itself, it’s a lifetime injury.
I hope that if anybody does read this they are curious enough to read or ask questions and be able to help themselves or someone they love.
We need understanding