Tag Archives: brain damage

If you’re going to lie to me….

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I don’t ask for much in life other than respect, so, if you are going to disrespect me by lying  to me, the least you can do is make an effort to make it a good, show a little creativity for God’s sake.

I’ve decided to rummage around in my mind and, perhaps the minds of others, to develop some fun, at least for me, responses to people who lie to me so brazenly and obviously I don’t know whether to burst out laughing and ask them if they’re joking or simply stupid enough to think I believe them, or smack them upside their “head” with a verbal dagger that says, we both know you’re lying and you’re such a self-absorbed little twit you’re going to stand by your stench-rubbish anyway.

Anyone who knows me knows I have no ability to be silent when someone’s rights are being denied. I don’t care of it’s people with disabilities, people who are Jewish, African American, Latino, Muslim, veterans, members of the LGBT community, women, etc., etc., I’m not about to stay silent. People who know me also know it is very likely, particularly of you are a public official or someone in a position of authority, that I am going to expose your bigotry for all to see. 

All that aside, let me say there is a special place in hell for people whose claim to care about the rights of others is nothing more than lip-service smoke screens. A form of dishonesty so glaringly obvious I want to grab them by the throat and say, “Why not grow some backbone and say out loud that you don’t give a rat’s ass about these people and you just care about money and power?” 

What’s somewhat amusing is the feigned indignity performances I get to see when I call someone out for lying, for being a hypocrite. They put so much effort into their performance (without exception they’re lousy actors) I’m surprised they don’t snort and dribble out of the corner of their mouths, go into convulsions, and start speaking in tongues. Some feign astonishment to such I degree I expect them to allow their simian roots to take over and start pounding their chest.

Many of the lies I see these days  come from those who claim they are committed to protecting the rights of New York residents who live with brain injury disabilities. Since their commitment is limited to the effort it takes to say they are committed, the least they could do is make a commitment to develop their lying skills. I’ll probably catch them anyway, but at least catching them might pose a sliver of a challenge. However, exposing them will not.

So, here’s the thing, if you’re going to lie to me, make an effort, or give us both a break and shut up.

Twenty-Eight Years Ago Today

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Twenty-eight years ago today I was held-up on my way to pick up my cab and shot in the head at point blank range. The bullet remains lodged in the frontal lobe of my brain. This is not a depressing day for me, not at all. In fact, as others who have survived similar moments have said, today is a second birthday of sorts.

What is worth noting is that it would be 10 years after the shooting before I would hear the words, brain damage. My experience is not unique. I know people with brain injuries all over this country and many went years before hearing the words brain injury, traumatic brain injury, TBI. Many of us were left to deal with the effects of brain damage not knowing that brain damage was the force behind the problems we were grappling with. We were, in  a sense, managing life blind folded, hands tied behind our back. We did our best, but it is hard to be successful when you don’t know or don’t understand what it is you’re up against.

All this is why it is so important for any state with a brain injury program to make sure those who design an implement the program have a solid working knowledge of the brain.

But this is not my reason for writing this today. My reason for writing this today is to share some thoughts with you. There is little doubt in my mind that you too have faced or are facing challenges that feel as if they have total control over every aspect of your life. I am here to tell you they don’t. They really, really don’t. The truth-telling, right-sizing equation goes like this; because something feels like it has total control doesn’t mean it has total control. It simply means it feels that way.

Believe me, there were times the damage to my brain felt all powerful. There were times too that the idea of returning to life after the combined experience of some kid put a gun to my head and firing and then another guy puts a gun to my head less than nine months later had so much power I did not step foot out of my house for nearly a year.  Were it not for some close friends who were my neighbors at 286 East 2nd Street in NYC, I don’t know how I would have stayed clothed and fed. In time, and with treatment, and the support and love of close friends, I began to reclaim my life and leave the house. 

And then there is this, you have a relationship with life and all the elements that come with life. I have a relationship with my brain injury. I have a relationship with the the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that is, today, my number one opponent. There are still days I can’t get myself to leave the house. The point is, these relationships are no different than relationships  between two people. They can be healthy or unhealthy. The challenge is this. Don’t let the elements of life that look to impeded your freedom to be you of have decision making power. Relieve them of decision making power every chance you get. There may be times you can’t. Okay. Relax. Don’t worry. Get some sleep, wake up the next day,  do your best.

The last thing these life-impeding elements deserve is to be behind the wheel of your life. That is your rightful place.

Thanks for listening. Take care of yourself. Remember to live.

LIVING WITH THE BRAIN INJURY GHOST

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Living with a brain injury is so hard sometimes it breaks my heart. I wrote those words to a friend of mine recently and as soon as I wrote them I knew this essay had finally begun. I’ve tried and failed to write it many times before. Writing about life with a brain injury is like trying to paint something in constant motion. It is nearly impossible. The brain injury never, and I mean never, stays still. Living with a brain injury is like living with a ghost.

I suffered my brain injury in 1984 when I was held-up on the streets of Brooklyn and shot in the head at point blank range. While doctors left the bullet in my brain because removing it would have resulted in more brain damage, no one told me I had a brain injury. I never heard the words traumatic brain injury, or TBI, the injury considered the signature injury of the current wars. The basic gist was this: No, Peter, you can’t play contact sports anymore and we are going to put you on anti-seizure medication for at least one year as a precautionary measure.

It would be 10 years before I learned I was living with brain damage, that the brain damage was impacting and damaging my life and, as a result, some of the people in my life.

If you think my story is unique, think again. Tragically, I am not alone. The brain injury epidemic in this country has been going on for a long time. More than 50,000 Americans die from them every year, including 7,000 children. More than five million Americans live with disabilities as a result of them and nearly 1.5 million Americans sustain brain injuries annually. Every 23 seconds an American suffers a brain injury. The Brain Injury Association of America reports that “(d)irect medical costs and indirect costs such as lost productivity of TBI totaled an estimated $56.3 billion in the United States in 1995.”

The brain injury ghost lurks everywhere and, as I imagine ghosts to be as rule, it can be highly unpredictable. It can be influencing your life experience and you don’t even know it. It can permeate light, sound, fatigue, anger, sadness, pressure, hunger, thought, perception, darkness, touch, balance, speech, memory, movement, coordination – in other words – everything and anything that you are.

Why is this so? Because your brain is your life manager. It is the filter through which you and I experience life. No doubt some will read this and say I am leaving God and spirituality out of the mix. Not so. It is through this miraculous life manager that we are able to experience God and spirituality in the first place.

But, like poltergeists, brain injuries can be mischievous, controlling, sneaky, dishonest, cruel, misleading and so forth. They can be so insidious at times that it may take you awhile to realize, if, in fact, you ever do realize, that they’ve been running the show and wrecking your daily life and, in many cases, the daily lives of others. Very often the people you like and love most. These ghosts can vandalize our daily life. They can be scary.

Yet despite these harsh realities, far too many who say they want to help and support those of us living with brain injuries have little if any idea of what it is like to live with one. In some instances, they are so predisposed to certain views, beliefs and motivations that they will never have any idea what it is like to live with brain damage.

In some, I would like to think, rare instances, the inability to understand is rooted in the fact they simply don’t care. We brain injury survivors are seen as a way of making money. Some health care providers are more about gutting and manipulating an already pitiful and unforgivable health care system than they are helping survivors ascend to their maximum level of independence.

Some in Washington and across the country squawk about the Canadian and French health care systems. They complain these systems are socialized medicine. They hope we will hear the word socialize, convert it to the word socialism, convert that word into the word communism, think them synonyms, and recoil in horror. Spare me.

Here’s how I see it. Everyone has health care coverage in Canada and like minded countries and no where near everyone has health care coverage in my country. When you are sick or injured you want health care. When you’re bleeding profusely in an emergency room you don’t give a rat’s ass whether your health care is socialized or managed care; you want the health care. In fact, you deserve it.

LETTER TO MY READERS

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Dear Reader,

Over the past weeks I have found myself so deeply disheartened at the absence of kindness, fairness, compassion and honesty on the part of my country’s leaders I’ve had a hard time moving the pen across the page. On nearly every front: political, business, religious, the media and more, I see choices driven by greed, dishonesty and a lack of respect for human life. I see New Orleans still in horrifying disarray and our young men and women being killed and maimed overseas. We have a federal government more wedded to political one upsmanship then it is to bringing our young people home and saving some lives – ours and the Iraqis. Any voiced concern for the environment, for the life of Mother Earth is, more often than not, an exercise in lip service. And, of course, the oil companies and the military complex continue tearing every dollar they can from the wallets and purses of a hard working public.

And forget about real regard and respect for law enforcment. In my last blog post I called for an Amber-alert type system to be put in place for law enforcement officers. I even sent it to some elected officials. No response. I sent it to some newspapers like the Albany Times Union and the New York Times. They did not publish it. Why? It was timely. State troopers had again been shot in my state and one was killed in the cross fire?

Despite all the aforementioned, none of us can afford to stay silent. I think it was Dante who said, and I am paraphrasing, The hottest places in hell are saved for those who remain silent in times of trouble. And so I will not, and I hope you will not, stay silent.

There are a few things on my mind now, goals I have, if you will, and I am asking for your help in achieving them.

1) I will soon begin publishing a series of essays on living life with brain damage. As most of you know, I live with brain damage as a result being shot in the head in 1984. Living with a brain injury, or a TBI (traumatic brain injury) is different every day. And given that nearly 2 million Americans suffer brain injuries annually (with more than 50,000 dying from them) and given that many of our veterans are coming home with brain injuries, the more people understand what it is like to live with one, the better equipped everyone will be to provide the deserved support. I am asking you to please make as many people as you can aware of these essays.

2) Given the recent Virginia Tech killings and our culture’s addiction to violence, I am looking to begin a college and high school speaking tour. Those of you who have connections in this area, please let me know. I will be acting as my own agent in this endeavor. I have lived a life that has included a wide range of experiences: being shot, homelessness, getting arrested, time in reform school, suicides of loved ones, loss of family, alcoholism, brain injury and PTSD. I have, as many of you know, given numerous speeches and I think life has placed me in a position to help young people (and adults) make the discovery that they need not be defined or controlled by the challenges they face. That their right to a good life does not deserve to be derailed.

3) Needless to say, I will continue, from time to time, to publish sections from the memoir in-progress and other nuggets.

I am asking all of you to please share this blog with everyone you know. Please ask people to join.

Lastly, from my heart to your heart, thank you for reading this blog. It is my sincere hope that joy, good health, happiness, love and a safe life are your constant companions.

I know what I wanted to say in this letter to you, I only hope I have said it.

Warmth and respect,

Peter S. Kahrmann
Berne, NY

DEAR BOB WOODRUFF

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Dear Bob Woodruff,

You and I and far too many others are survivors of traumatic brain injuries. You and I and far too many others who have survived traumatic brain injuries, or any trauma for that matter, have found themselves in the insidious grip of guilt. You and I and far too many others like us are guilty of nothing. Because you feel guilty doesn’t mean you are guilty, it means that is how you feel. It is a feeling, not a definition.

It was the explosion the wounded you, it was the gunshot that wounded me, it was the car accident or the fall or the assault or the stroke that wounded so many others. It is these events and these events alone that provide guilt its just living quarters

In recent interviews I have watched you and Lee take the wide-open courage step of letting people see what it is like to suffer a traumatic brain injury and what it is like to live with one. I have heard questions seeking to know how far back you are. Would you say 95 % they ask? As you and Lee and your family already know, the answer is not that easy and my thought would be, put down any instinct to measure and gauge that answer and live.

I work with survivors like us nearly every day and recently I asked them how they would describe living with a brain injury on a daily basis. There were answers like, Well, there are things we can’t do any more and other statements like they (the injuries) make it harder to manage our emotions and I don’t remember things as well as I did and I can’t talk the way I used to. In each of these discussions these answers would land on the table and we would all look at each other, shake our heads, and nearly in unison acknowledge that none of these answers come close to describing what it is like to live with a brain injury on a daily basis.

Here is what we did agree on. Living with a brain injury is different every day. In fact, living with a brain injury has one reality when rested and another reality when fatigued. We also agreed that none of us are defined by our injuries nor are we defined by the symptoms we deal with as a result of our injuries. We also agreed that none of us are diminished by our injuries, even though there have been and, for some, still are times when we feel diminished because of our injuries. We also know that there are times we are treated by others as if we have less value and less worth than others and that treatment too delivers an inaccurate message about who we are.

Years ago a very wise old man was asked what it was like to age. He paused and said, We are each like a lit light bulb. You have to decide, are you the bulb, which breaks down over time, or are you the light inside the bulb? We are the light inside the bulb, and that never dies.

The light of who you are, Bob Woodruff, is not gone. It is not damaged or diminished by the trauma you have survived. While you may not see the light all the time, while you may not see its luster and brilliance all the time, it does not mean it is not there all the time. From time to time life blinds us to the light that is our humanity’s unbending value and worth. Those moments of darkness do not mean the light is gone. Darkness, like emotion, are experiences in the moment and of the moment. Neither are definitions. The inner light and human value of all survivors is present all time.

Needless to say, the words written here apply to all of us for all of us in life encounter experiences that blind us to our worth, yet none of these experiences remove or diminish our worth unless we allow them too.

There is a nugget of American Indian lore I am particularly fond of. A warrior went to his chief and said, Chief, I have two wolves battling inside me, the good wolf and the bad wolf. Which one is going to win? The chief said, Whichever one you feed the most.

Keep feeding the good wolf as you are, Bob Woodruff. And remember, there will be times when people will ask for your attention and your presence and the healthier choice will be to say no and give yourself and your loved ones time away from all others. Saying no can prompt another bout of undeserved guilt, so here is another expression. Taking care of your self is not an act of disloyalty to anyone else.

Stay in the day, remember to live, and keep listening to Bruce Springsteen. You and I are very much in lock-step when it comes to the Boss. His songs got me through many a dark day and helped me remember that the light, for me and for you and for all of us, really is always there.

In his last album he sings We Shall Overcome. We will.

Warmth and respect,

Peter S. Kahrmann