Steven Pfahning

On May 22, 2018, I hit a deer while riding my motorcycle. I lost my spleen, broke 8 ribs which punctured both lungs which both collapsed. I broke my left clavicle, scapula, and eye orbit. I fractured my skull and suffered severe Diffuse Axonal Injury. I needed to immediately have a partial lobectomy of my right temporal lobe. The main functions of temporal lobes include understanding language, memory acquisition, face recognition, object recognition, perception, and processing auditory information. I suffered in all the above functions. I could not speak for almost 2 years due to Global Aphasia. I was in a hospital and psychiatric hospital for around 6 and a half months. I had a very large craniectomy where the bone flap was out for 4 months. When my skull was replaced, I suffered an intracranial hematoma. The bone flap had to be removed again. All my progress over the first 4 months went terribly backwards. My wife could not handle this anymore and decided to never talk to me again, divorce me, sell my house and keep everything I may need in the future to ever have a place to live myself. I was sent to a group home specializing in Traumatic Brain Injury. This was the start of an amazing new life.

The primary step to my recovery was when my speech therapist gave me an exercise where I had to find a list of words in a word find grid. The list of words was really a list of trivia questions. The correct answer to each question was the word I needed to find in the word search. Historically, I was very competitive. I always wanted to win challenges. I had so many memory problems so I could not answer the questions. To win, I used Alexa. I could barely talk at this point but pushed myself extremely hard to use Alexa to get the answers. I had to wordsmith the questions to get the right answers. My natural competitive nature returned, and I finished the word search. I decided that trivia was good for my recovery. I started watching trivia shows for about 3 – 4 hours every weekday for a couple years. This repetition training helped my uninjured remaining brain nerves to trigger neuroplasticity. I now speak extremely well and most of my memory has returned.

After the neuroplasticity started changing my life where I could think and talk in real words, I wrote the following to myself and read this passage the first thing each morning:

𝐈𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐞. 𝐈𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐞, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐤𝐲’𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐭. 𝐀 𝐬𝐤𝐲 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐜𝐥𝐨𝐮𝐝 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠.

This message made me feel so good despite losing almost everything I ever had including my wife, home, vehicles and possessions etc.

Several months later I came up with another saying. I did not write it down, but I would tell this to myself quite often. The gist of what I said to myself is below:

𝐀𝐥𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐈 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐨𝐫 𝐧𝐨 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐥 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐲 𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧, 𝐈 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐚𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝟏𝟎𝟎% 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐥 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐲 𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐞. 𝐈 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐞 𝐦𝐲𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐦𝐲 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲, 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐲 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲.
𝐒𝐨 𝐟𝐚𝐫, 𝐈 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐝𝐨 𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐝𝐨, 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐢𝐧𝐣𝐮𝐫𝐲. 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈 𝐤𝐞𝐞𝐩 𝐚 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐤𝐲 𝐢𝐬 𝐦𝐲 𝐥𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐭

My story can be the survival guide to others suffering TBI. That has made this journey worth every minute. No one could find examples of others that recovered from similar severe brain injury. If I can be that person to others, my life has become perfect!

I suffered from bad memory losses on occasion. My guardian decided that I was having seizures. I said it was something else and we needed to discover the problem. He said that I could never move forward and get my license back due to seizures. I would wake up and forget about what happened to me and wonder why I was living in someone else’s house. I noticed that the timing of my memory loss usually happened in the morning. I asked the group home leader to remind me to check my blood oxygen saturation the next time I lost my memory. When that happened, I checked my blood oxygen saturation which was 73. A physician determined that I had a bad case of sleep apnea. I was not having seizures. After getting a CPAP I did not have any additional memory losses. After a year with no memory losses, I got upset with my guardian that he still insisted that I was at risk of having seizures. I told him that I should be able to move my life forward and get my license back. Another year or so went on and I was not allowed to try to move my life forward. I confronted my family and informed them that I was very angry that I could not get my life back. A few months later, my guardian informed the group home leader that he was quitting being my guardian and handing me off to a corporate guardian. I took over and I saw a psychologist, neuro psychologist, lawyer, social worker, guardian ad litem and judge and I was determined to be competent and could terminate guardianship on a court decision due to my competency.

I’m still at a group home, but I use my car to home deliver meals for Aging & Disability Resource Center in Plover Wisconsin. I’m giving my new gift of life back to society. One of the world’s best neurosurgeons told my family to never expect me to ever get better than living in a vegetative state. I’m BETTER!!!

When it feels like there is no hope, don’t give up. I designed a shirt of my motto “Just Don’t Quit”. Attitude has saved my life.