One of my students this past semester, a young woman named Chrissy Bongiorni, had been hit by a car her junior year in high school. As a result, she was in a coma for several months and suffered brain trauma. She has no short-term memory. As a junior at Gordon College, she has managed to navigate the rigors and demands of higher education by her ever-reliable day-timer. She is also a Communications major. She took my Writing for Media class at Gordon this past semester and, despite the obstacles she faced daily to make it to class, fulfill the assignments and meet the deadlines, she never missed one. On one particular assignment, however, her brain injury made it impossible to fulfill it. So instead I gave her another assignment, which I've posted below, with her permission. It is called A Memoir of No Memory: My Life as a Journalist Who Can't Remember, by Chrissy Bongiorni:
The morning came, as it did every day, and I made my way to school. I had a million things to remember to do that day; a meeting in the morning; a group project to work on; research for the article I was writing; and the usual cheerleading practice I had later that evening. As I arrived in the parking lot, I was right on time and needed only to cross the street. Despite my heedful glances that I made back and forth, after my fourth step inside the crosswalk, I was hit by the fast-moving oncoming car. In this moment my life changed forever because of the impact and trauma to my brain.
Due to the Lord’s grace, I am still alive today, despite the traumatic brain injury. The brain, being quite complex, only resulted in one way after this event. Just as if you fall on your ankle, the joint will swell up. Similarly, as my head hit hard against the pavement, my brain swelled up. This traumatic brain injury kept me in a coma for months. I finally woke up on a sunny morning. Thus, the road to rehabilitation began and my above-mentioned assignments were indefinitely put on hold.
Everything now was quite different. My injury caused me to need to relearn how to do several simple things. First and foremost, I had to re-learn how to move. I had to learn to eat without a food tube and breathe without a tracheostomy. I had to re-learn how to walk because my injury altered my sense of balance. My therapists rescued me, teaching me how to find my balance. Plastic, inserting braces were made for my feet. This helped me gain stability and eventually learn how to walk.
Another physical limitation that my brain injury created was that of one of the upper ligaments in my left arm, which has been substantially tightened. Doctors resorted to the use of Botox injections to loosen the muscles in my left arm. Despite the stretching that I continuously do every day, I am now unable to easily raise my left arm straight up, over my head. My left arm will always be tighter and slower to move, since Botox is only a temporary aid to the tightness. I am forced now to do exercises to stretch it out and keep the circulation moving.
Due to the extent of my injury, I relied on a lot of support and love from my family and friends. My parents continuously brought me to therapy. Those few hours a day were not enough, so my parents worked to reinforce the therapy exercises and techniques of doing other things. My parents brought my therapy home and continued rehabilitation. They helped me bridge the rehabilitation hospital life with the normal life that I desired to live. My parents never lost hope.
Life with a traumatic brain injury can be quite a test for family and friends and also for completing school work and basic responsibilities. My short-term memory has been tested the most with my injury. Because of the section of brain injured, everything that happened to me before the accident was untouched. This therefore left all the relationships I have had with my mother, sister, best friend, neighbor down the street the same as they were before. Now, however, meeting new people is hard. It takes longer to recognize them and create a basis of a relationship. Keeping up my previous relationships is now more work too. Ultimately, creating new relationships and memories is now the struggle.
Along with the problem of new relationships, retaining new information is also difficult. This makes schools extremely hard to manage and absorb. It takes much longer to do assignments now. Much more studying is required now in order to learn something and retain some recollection of it. Dealing with the injured part of the brain, the process of entry and retrieval of this information has been stressed. While still accessible, that region of my brain is harder to access.
My life today, goes on and thrives with new habits. As an effect of the brain injury and my short-term memory lapses, a lot more planning goes into my day. My planner has literally become my new right hand. If a meeting/assignment/plan/occasion is not put in my planner, there is no guarantee that I will do it or even remember it. This is my new way of “scheduling” my life. I always refer back to it.
As one may expect, living my life with a traumatic brain injury is constant work. The obvious disadvantage of this injury is the extra effort it requires to remember something or recognize someone. Something someone tells me about the traffic downtown might be forgotten by the time I am in the car and on my way. This is a realistic challenge of my life. However; on the up side, I am able to forget of some of the episodes or even emotions of moments that may not be worth remembering anyway. My faulty memory may in fact be saving me from possible discontent I have with the world or even my life.
Right now, in this very moment, I sit focused and awake at my desk in my dorm room. It is a pretty quiet day on a Sunday morning. Having everyone still be on their way home from church, I hear just an occasional slam of a door being shut or water running. My roomate is not here so all noise in my room is quiet. It is a beautiful day outside and the sun is shining bright. In this moment, I feel at ease, enthralled in my work with minimal distractions. This was in fact, my time at 12:33 on Sunday morning/afternoon.
I may not remember this moment tomorrow, having that my memory of a day or occasion is never guaranteed. The importance of an event makes it easier to remember, as does a connection to my past, relationships or enjoyment. With regard to the moment right now, I will be able to recall that I did get a good chunk of work done. This event is not only connected to that time, but also to that of something in the future. I will probably have a greater recollection of this time because of its relation to what is due this coming week. But as to the quiet activity and beauty outside, this might not make a big enough dent to be retained in my memory.
I have asked and re-asked myself the all-famous question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” My life’s career goals have varied from being a teacher, a nutritionist and now a communications writer of some sort. I have always had a knack for writing. Being one of the qualities I didn’t lose due to my injury, I hope to find this as some kind of basis for my profession. I really would be fit for a career in a journalistic path that involves in-depth research. Since it is not something “right at the moment,” my work would be thorough, focused and I would have the needed time to research for a story. This would allow me to craft up a clever, yet informative story.
Having the career motive of communications/journalist, I am prepared for ways of covering stories. If I needed to go to an event to help cover my story, I will do research to bring me to the level of understanding of the story that would therefore help fuel the creation of further investigation of or themes for the story on itself. I know my faults and how to make up for them. My journalistic style of focusing on a theme of a story will help bring a fresh voice to the coverage of an event. Ironically, my dream of working in communications is both my way of spreading the story of what has happened yesterday; all the while I am creating my own story at the same time.
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