Category Archives: brain injury

KAHRMANN MEMOIR – CHAPTERS 1 & 2

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Chapter 1

I DON’T UNDERSTAND

I am dying on the ground bleeding to death and I don’t understand. I wasn’t bothering anybody. I was just going to work, minding my own business. I wasn’t doing anything wrong and now I’m on the ground dying.

I’m 30 years old and just a little while ago I’m walking down Bergen Street to pick up my cab from the fleet garage. I have a block and a half to go. I hear the sound of keys behind me. A hand grabs my shoulder and a kid with wild floating eyes is pointing a gun at my head and he says, “Don’t fucking move.”

I say, “I won’t,” and I look away because I don’t want him thinking I’ll remember his face.

The gun’s against my head and somebody’s behind me now going through my pockets and getting the sixty-three dollars I have to lease the cab today. I’m waiting for wild floating eyes to hit me on the head with the gun because I know he will so they can get a running head start. But he doesn’t hit me at all. He shoots me.

I’m on the ground and feel nothing neck down. Nothing. I can’t see. The top of my head feels like it’s been blown off there is so much pressure. I open my eyes and I can’t see and can’t feel and I know I’m going to die.

There’s Jennifer’s face listening to someone tell her Daddy’s dead and maybe if I can get up and die trying to get to the hospital she’ll know I didn’t give up. She’ll know I tried the best I could. I can leave her a courage note that way – if I can only get up.

A dark damp blanket tightens around me and I think of Daddy and how he died when I was fifteen so if he can go from here to there, from life to death, maybe it’s okay then. Maybe it’s not so bad dying. Now I feel less scared. Now I can see smoky light and dark images and shapes and they make little sense to me. Jesus fucking Christ I’m dying and I’m seeing a black and white movie and I don’t understand.

The smoke clears for me and I see I’m on the sidewalk on my right side. I see a tree near me.

I’m standing and I don’t remember getting up, I’m just glad I’m standing. I lift my hand to my head and blood hits my hand before it gets there. I untie my blue hooded sweatshirt around my waist and press it against my head to stop the bleeding.

Chapter 2

“OOF!”

I am six years old watching my father at his desk reading and marking college papers. He teaches English in Columbia and John Jay College for Criminal Justice. I am sitting at the foot of his twin bed because it faces his desk. He and my mother have separate rooms. They say it’s because my father snores which is true and my mother is a light sleeper which is also true.

I love watching my father work. He wears half-glasses and a draftsman’s light is clamped to his desk. Smoke from his cigarette curls like a white snake up to the light and rolls along the length of the flourescent bulb before rising up and disappearing into thin air. Behind him is a wall of books. I feel a surge of love for him, do an end run around the desk and throw my arms around him. He says, pretending I’ve knocked the wind out of him. We laugh and hold each other and then I go back to my seat on the bed and return to watching him. He returns to his papers. I run and hug him a lot like this and he always hugs me back.

I am two, three, four and I already know my parents are God. Everybody knows their parents are God. I’m on to this right from the start. My mother isn’t even looking when she catches me doing something I’m not supposed to.

She says, “I have eyes in the back of my head, young man. I do. Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up too.”

I know those eyes are in the back of her head somewhere because she says she never lies so I know they’re ther. I can’t find them no matter how hard I search her graying hair, but they’re there alright.

My parents are in charge of everything, of course, because they are God. On Sunday’s we go to the Naurashaun Presbyterian Church. I don’t understand this because my parents are God and they live with me. The Reverend Bill Daniel talks about God like he is invisible or something but I’m not fooled for a minute because I have God sitting on either side of me. Why don’t they just say so? Why don’t they just admit it?

THE AMERICAN BRAIN INJURY EPIDEMIC

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As a brain injury survivor and one who works with brain injury survivors I am saddened but not surprised that a leading expert in forensic pathology says former National Football League player Andre Waters’s November 2006 suicide was likely tied to brain damage suffered by Mr. Waters over his playing career.

The New York Times today said forensics expert Dr. Bennet Omalu of the University of Pittsburgh “determined that (Andre) Waters’s brain tissue had degenerated into that of an 85-year-old man with similar characteristics as those of early-stage Alzheimer’s and that if he had lived, within 10 or 15 years “Andre Waters would have been fully incapacitated.””

There is an epidemic of brain injuries in the United States and we, as a people, are playing catch-up. In some quarters we are waging the catch-up battle valiantly, but we have a long way to go.

I sustained my brain injury in 1984 when I was held up and shot in the head at point blank range. While I received extraordinary medical care, no one, and I mean no one, mentioned the words brain injury or brain damage to me. And so I left the hospital with a bullet in my frontal lobe, bone spray in my left temporal lobe, and a sharp awareness that I would be wise to avoid contact sports.

It would be nearly 10 years before I learned that the damage to my brain impacted my daily life in a very real way. I am far from alone and not even in the same room with unique on this front. Millions of Americans deal with brain injuries. Think this is an overstatement? Try these facts on for size.

– With more than 50,000 Americans dying every year from brain injuries, it is safe to say more than 1 million Americans have died in the 22 years since I was injured, including more than 150,000 children.
– 1.4 million Americans sustain brain injuries annually.
– In 1995, direct medical costs coupled with lost production cost the United States an estimated $56.3 billion.
– Many members of the American military wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan have suffered brain injuries.

If you think only football players or those in contact sports run the risk of injuries like those suffered by Mr. Waters, you are sadly mistaken. A couple of years ago I went to a conference on brain injury at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. A forensics expert showed that if you have someone lie down on their back, lift their head 12 inches off the ground, and let go, the skull is travelling 40 miles per hour when it strikes the surface.

We are not quite holding our own in this catch-up battle. There was, after all, no brain injury association on the national level until 1980. Now we have the Brain Injury Association of America, a wonderful organization. States have their respective brain injury associations, all deserving of their citizens support. I am a member and board member of the Brain Injury Association of New York.

Unlike cuts and bruises and broken bones, brain injuries do not heal. Yet the reluctance of so many to take simple precautions is mind boggling. I have seen the following scene too many times. A family is on a bicycle ride. The children are dutifully wearing their helmets (sometimes) while the parents are not wearing their helmets. Perhaps the parents think that adulthood means they are no longer beholden to the law of gravity. Or, perhaps, there is a bit of vanity at work, some concern that one’s hairstyle will get messed, or, some “real man” doesn’t wear a helmet because he is , well, a “real man”. Dazzling displays of reasoning for sure. Tell you what though, when you’re paralyzed and/or you can’t remember what happened five minutes ago, remind me to ask you who your hair stylist is, or what it’s like to be a “real man.” But then again, why should I bother? You won’t remember anyway.

If you are from New York State, you can contact the Brain Injury Association of New York, the one I belong to at http://www.bianys.org/

Contact the Brain Injury Association of America for information on a Brain Injury Association near you. Please visit their website at http://www.biausa.org/