I have not yet shared how my husband got his TBI or more details of our story. Here’s to resolving big chunks of that. 🙂
One Sunday evening in early 2010, my husband, John, left the house for work. It was an evening like many others that we were used to at that time. We had dinner together, gave each other a hug and kiss, and he left. I stayed home to end my day and get ready for the work week ahead. I knew he would give me a call later in the evening to say goodnight, which was our routine.
John was a police officer in the DUI (Driving Under the Influence) unit of a large city police department. He enjoyed what he did in the sense that he knew he was making a difference with each intoxicated driver he got off the street – potentially saving the life of an unknown person who might get hurt by the driver. Because he was in the DUI unit, he worked nights, leaving the house just after dinner and getting home around 6:00 am the next day. I worked an office job, 7:30am-4:30pm.
On this night, his traditional goodnight call was late in coming. It slightly worried me but not too much. Sometimes he would get busy and we’d skip it. I was about to go to bed when I got a call from him. When I answered, I could hear other voices and commotion in the background. He said something like, “I’m okay but I’ve been in an accident.” As I began to ask questions and he was trying to answer, I heard a voice in the near background say, “Who is that? Your wife?” Then, the phone was jostled and I was speaking with a different man. He said, “Are you his wife?” After confirming, he said, “I am a paramedic. Your husband has been in an accident. We are taking him to the hospital.” I think I got some quick answers like, “He’s okay. He’s talking. No broken bones. Don’t come to the hospital.” I was told not to go to the hospital because he didn’t seem that bad, we lived a long ways from the hospital, the roads were snow packed and icy, and it was Super Bowl Sunday. It wasn’t worth the risk.
I did what I was told and didn’t rush to the hospital. But, as the minutes went by I began to say to myself, “Erin, this is crazy. You need to be with him. Just go and drive slow.” I was about to change out of my pjs into clothes when I got a call from John’s sergeant. He told me that John was doing well and that the doctors were expecting him to be released later that evening/early morning. He told me that John was talking, joking, and laughing with his co-workers and the medical staff. He reiterated that I did not need to go to the hospital. That I should stay home, try to go to sleep, and the guys would get John and his vehicle home later that evening. After that call, I felt better and did in fact go to bed.
John got home later that night, as planned. I woke up and helped him get to bed. He was walking and talking on his own; all-be-it obviously high on pain medication and moving slowly. He went to bed and I went back to sleep too. I woke up a few hours later and, as absolutely insane as it sounds now, went to work. I knew John would be asleep for most of the day and that he’d call if he needed me. I left him water, some snacks, and other items at the bedside. I did end up going home early that day, much to the caring urging of my boss. God bless her, she probably still looks back on that day and is perplexed as to why I was there. All I can say is that I was the wife of a cop. I saw it as part of my job to be strong for John and to realize that his line of work had a high likelihood of him getting hurt or other issues. This was the first time he had come home so injured but it was not the first time I had received a convoluted or frantic phone call because of line-of-duty matters. It’s not that I don’t care or am cold; I just have a very systematic way of dealing with stressful situations.
Here is how John got hurt that night.
John had just gotten onto his shift and had pulled over someone he suspected of driving under-the-influence. I say intoxicated instead of drunk because it is an important distinction. John would pull over drivers who were drunk or high on prescription, non-prescription, or illegal drugs, or, for texting or otherwise distracted driving. I think there is a misnomer about thinking DUI cops only deal with drunk drivers.
Getting back to the story, I will call the driver John had just pulled over, Sam. John pulled Sam over just past a traffic light on a busy thoroughfare out of downtown. It was a one-way street with 4 lanes and street parking on both sides. The speed limit was around 35 mph. John parked his patrol car, lights on, about 3 car lengths behind Sam’s vehicle. Sam pulled over a few feet behind a parked vehicle on the road. John had just gotten Sam out of the car to initiate roadsides. Roadsides are the battery of tests police officers give to drivers suspected of being intoxicated. John was starting to work with Sam when John happened to look over his right shoulder, up the street, in the direction of oncoming traffic, and saw a vehicle careening towards them out of control and at a high speed. I will call the driver of this vehicle Matt. John yelled at Sam to run but Sam didn’t understand. John picked him up and ran, carrying and pushing him to safety. He did this by running between the parked vehicle and Sam’s car. We are unsure exactly what happened but we think that John’s left leg was extended behind him as he was just about to clear the “fatal funnel” between the two cars when Sam’s car was pushed forward into the parked vehicle and, in the process, hit John. He was thrown into the air, spun around, and hit the wall of the building across the sidewalk about 6′ up with the left side of his body and then fell to the ground. Sam was safe.
Matt ended up being high on cocaine, weed, and drunk. He was driving about 60 mph down the one-way road, hit an icy patch, lost control of his car, and rammed it into the back of John’s patrol car. This propelled John’s vehicle 3 car lengths forward, into Sam’s vehicle, which pushed Sam’s vehicle into the parked car in front of it. It’s a good thing John was not in his vehicle when the crash occurred. The engine block would have been in his lap. Matt was not significantly injured.
John remembers waking up and seeing where he was at and thinking, “Get up. It’s not your time.” He looked around and used his radio to dispatch to call an ambulance. Come to find out an ambulance had already been called. One of John’s co-workers saw the accident occur and had already called it in. We think that this fellow police officer saw Matt coming down the road before John did and had hit his air horn on his patrol car. This loud noise alerted John and may have been why John looked over his shoulder at the oncoming traffic. John’s memory of this is fuzzy though and he is not sure.
John doesn’t really remember that night. As the days passed, we realized that he was bruised and banged up physically but able to seemingly function otherwise. He was back at work. He was forgetting things and irritable but we figured that was the pain medication he was still taking and just the general recovery process.
Honestly, the few months after the accident are kind of a blur to me too. I remember John starting to get really snippy and grumpy. The day after one particularly bad night, John had an appointment with a new therapist. He’d been to numerous doctor’s appointments at this point. He wasn’t sleeping well, was forgetful, was loosing track of things, and irritable because he couldn’t understand what was still wrong. Why he wasn’t snapping out of it. That day, he was meeting with an occupational therapist and speech pathologist, who ended up being a life changer for him and for us. We are still friends with her and with one of the neurologists he began seeing then.
John came home after that appointment with a set of papers that said something like, “You have a TBI if…” and listed a number of symptoms. John had nearly all of them. Both of us had this ah-ha moment of “my goodness, this is what’s been wrong!” The very next question was, “Okay, how do we fix this then?”
Well, that was both the awakening of understanding but also the awakening of realizing that there was no fixing this or making it better. At least in the sense that John was not going to be able to get 100% better. This was, forgive me from all those who understand these dreaded words, a new normal. A new reality for John and for our lives together. It would be many months later before we really comprehended the sacrifices we would be making or what this new reality meant. It would be many months later before we realized there was no overcoming this.
John later learned that this TBI was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. He had received many, many TBIs and concussive incidents while he was serving as a Marine. Each time he was flash banged or knocked out, which occurred frequently in his training and duties, he received a small TBI. These culminated to the breaking point with the one he received in 2010. I like to think of this as similar to professional football players or boxers. They receive enough hits to the head and eventually there’s no turning back.
John and I have been adapting to his new normal for over a decade now. He has stabilized but new things come up – both good and bad. As the medical field learns more about brain injuries new tools, medications, and so on usually improve things for John. It has been frustrating at times to learn that John has injuries he received that day that were missed at the time but haunt him. Many months after the incident we learned that John had a broken neck for instance. He has had a shoulder surgery to correct his scapula which winged out afterwards. He had that surgery roughly 5 years later. He takes a lot of medications and this has an impact on his blood pressure and kidney functioning. As he gets older, he has a greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s or dementia. One good thing that happened a few years after the accident, when we thought there would be no more improvements, was that he relearned the ability to do math in his head. He’d had this skill pre-TBI but had lost it. His brain found a way to do that again. That was a win.
It is not all sacrifice. We have a daughter now, largely a decision made because of the injury and after he was medically retired. I’m not so sure we would have decided to try for children if he hadn’t been retired. I get him home now. At first, I was worried about this because I had been used to having large blocks of uninterrupted time alone which I relished. But, it works for us that he’s home now. We get to spend more time together. I no longer have to worry about him leaving the house each night to work as a police officer and put his life on the line for the wellbeing of others. In an odd way, we both believe that even this bad thing happened for a reason. It forced John to slow down. It also forced me to slow down too; although, those who know me probably don’t agree with that. I like to stay busy.
Please let me know if you have questions or anything to add.
TBI Spouse (and Others) 