Navigating the Long Road: My Ongoing Recovery Through Brain Injury and PTSD

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It became painfully clear after my 2010 cycling crash that there was more than met the eye to my injuries. The vehicle, driven by a 17-year-old, left me with lacerations, broken bones, and bruises that became a veritable rainbow of colors over the weeks that followed.

The day after I was hit on my bike, a local neurologist literally high-fived me, telling me that I had no discernible neurological issues and sending me on my way. But it became painfully clear almost from the beginning that something was not right. The first indication of a brain injury was the seismic shift in my personality. A splash of frontal lobe damage can certainly change a person.

I took another leap into a new reality, one that was so debilitating that it sucked the will to live right out of me. Post-traumatic stress disorder became my immediate companion; manifesting in ways that I now know to be textbook examples of trauma. A passing ambulance would reduce me to sobs. Driving past a car crash was another trigger, often rendering me all but useless for the rest of the day.

But, by far, the greatest manifestation of my PTSD was the incessant night terrors. The first year was defined by three to four traumatic nights a week. Life was hellish in the truest sense. My wife, Sarah, suffered as much as I did. Her powerlessness over my nighttime outbursts of screaming became a source of her own trauma.

The medical gears churned slowly. It was somewhere just before six months out that I was given the official medical diagnosis of PTSD. Amazingly, it was more than a year after my injury that a doctor first told me that I had experienced a traumatic brain injury. Until then, I had been told that it was “only a concussion.”

For as tough as life was during those early years, I am grateful that I had no idea what was coming. Those night terrors that put the fear of sleep into my nights, and robbed my days of any hope, would continue, mostly unabated, for more than 13 years. Take a moment to wrap your mind around that. Almost a decade-and-a-half of insufferable challenges.

Not one to sit on the sidelines of my recovery, there was cognitive therapy, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy, and more cognitive therapy. It became clear that my TBI caused fewer challenges than my PTSD. My brain injury had a regular rhythm: push too hard, pay the price. Do too much, pay the price. It was largely predictable. Not so with my night terrors. No rhyme, no reason, just ever-present terror.

In December of last year, I experienced a dramatic uptick in my night terrors. Life became unsustainable, and I again reached out to the professional community in search of help. It was a tough, but necessary choice. Almost eight months have passed since that decision to seek help. And happily, reaching out last year has resulted in game-changing results.

Through most of this year, I was under the care of three mental health professionals: a therapist, an EMDR practitioner, and finally, a prescribing psychiatrist. My time with my EMDR professional and therapist ran its course, but I continue with my psychiatrist. Earlier this year, she recommended a pharmacological approach, prescribing medication often given to combat veterans with PTSD. Clinical data regarding its efficacy was strong. And it has totally changed the trajectory of my recovery.

Over the last two months, I’ve had a grand total of two bad nights. The feeling of taking control of my life again is indescribable. Never in the years since my accident have I been able to go as long with solid sleep. And never in the last almost 14 years have I felt that there might just be a successful resolution to the PTSD challenges that have tormented me for so long.

When I had my final meeting with my EMDR doctor, he asked me why I had never before opted for pharmacological intervention. He knew my medical history and my trauma-induced challenges. “It was never suggested by any of my prior medical practitioners that there might be help through medication,” I said. My answer left him speechless.

While the recent news that brain injury is now categorized as a chronic medical condition by Medicare and Medicaid is encouraging, the very fact that it took so many years to pass for someone to suggest an alternative, proven course of action tells me that we still have a long way to go. But for now, I am going to bask in the blessed relief of being able to climb into bed at night and not worry about what might happen after I fall asleep.

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