I am currently studying to get my Bachelor of Science in Nursing, and I then intend to go on to study neurology. Last week, I attended the International Conference on Human Nutrition and Functional Medicine in Portland, Oregon. This was a conference that was intended only for licensed practitioners and medical students. I was invited by Dr. Alex Vasquez, the doctor who organized the event (see post: “Off to See The Wizard”). Without any preparation or notice, I was given a chance to speak to a room full of a few hundred practitioners and students, about brain building nutrition (I like to call it “food for thought”). I will post the video to my website when Dr. Alex Vasquez sends it to me. I feel like what I am doing is big! I think that it will be a significant contribution to TBI perception, understanding, and resources. And it is all thanks to each of you!

Please read the last words of my weekly posts in May of 2013.

Excerpt from my last weekly post, “Hell of a Year” 

A saying that I have heard a lot since surrounding myself with brain injury is this: “if you have seen one brain injury… You have seen ONE brain injury.” Brains are like fingerprints in the sense that no two brains are the same, and so no two brain injuries are the same. There is precious little known about the brain and there is certainly no cookie cutter approach to brain injury treatment. I am very lucky not only to have woke from my 12 day coma, to have dodged a bullet when I almost suffocated due to a closing airway that the hospital staff was foolishly throwing anti anxiety drugs at, or for my mental state being aware enough to follow instructions; but also for my aunt steering me in a direction to truly get better, for all of the social programs that made my recovery possible, hundreds of other things, and especially for my incredible mother. I know that I am lucky – or fortunate, as my driving instructor says – and I plan to pay my fortune forward so that others get a chance to recover as I did.

If I were to do it over again, would I have stayed home on that fateful day? I cannot really answer that question, but I can look at all of the meaningful things that have happened and how my life has changed forever; and I can choose to see the good things that have happened since that day and I can be thankful rather than bitter. Instead of saying that “this damn brain injury” won’t let me play guitar the way used to, I can say that “this damn brain injury” forced me to realize my mental strength, my abilities, and has been the catalyst of my interest in the brain and brain injury. I have always seemed to have the drive, but I lacked direction. “This damn brain injury” has given me direction, and I am thankful for that.

“If life deals you a bag of hammers, build something.” -Michael J. Fox