Impact

Women Writing After Concussion

E. D. Morin, Jane Cawthorne, E. D. Morin, Jane Cawthorne

• Publisher: University of Alberta Press
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781772125863
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Medicine Biographies
• Index: Literature

In Impact, 21 women writers consider the effects of concussion on their personal and professional lives. The anthology bears witness to the painstaking work that goes into redefining identity and regaining creative practice after a traumatic event. By sharing their complex and sometimes incomplete healing journeys, these women convey the magnitude of a disability which is often doubted, overlooked, and trivialized, in part because of its invisibility. Impact offers compassion and empathy to all readers and families healing from concussion and other types of trauma. Contributors: Adèle Barclay, Jane Cawthorne, Tracy Wai de Boer, Stephanie Everett, Mary-Jo Fetterly, Rayanne Haines, Jane Harris, Kyla Jamieson, Alexis Kienlen, Claire Lacey, E. D. Morin, Julia Nunes, Shelley Pacholok, Chiedza Pasipanodya, Judy Rebick, Julie Sedivy, Dianah Smith, Carrie Snyder, Kinnie Starr, Amy Stuart, Anna Swanson Available on many channels, including Libro.fm.

In Exile I Draw the Tower Card

KYLA JAMIESON

When I injured my brain

it was barely spring.

Now it is mid-October

and getting up at eleven

is a big accomplishment.

Last month I counted

the five hundred extra

hours I’ve spent sleeping

in this new state

where sunlight augurs

pain. I lose simple thoughts

before I can finish them

and feel lonely without

my mind. I’m always asking

whoever I’m talking to

what was I saying?

When everyone went

back to school I stayed

home, stopped having

goals, stopped dreaming

of putting my body

in a body of water. I tried

to edit what I wrote

and was bad at it, the kind

of bad trying harder

can’t fix. I felt useless

and alive. I watched

the doctor type prognosis

unknown and let hope

ghost me. Remind me where

the soul lives? How to tell

body from mind?

Ups and downs, I say

when asked if I’m recovering

in crowds I get dizzy

and sweat from the noise

and movement of bodies

around me. I am a woman

who holds her head

slightly off centre,

always comes alone,

is relearning most things.

Where to begin?

Lost

JANE CAWTHORNE

I AM LOST. I squint beneath my sunglasses, shade my eyes with my hand and try to look around without moving my head too much. I see a bench, sit down and try to think, try to separate one strand of thought from another and follow it through. I can feel my brain working. I’m on the main street near my house and I’ve been outside for—I’m guessing—ten minutes. I can only be four or five blocks from home.1 Rising anxiety makes it difficult for me to know what to do.2

My phone is like a talisman in my pocket and I want to call my husband, but I don’t know his number.3 Then I remember: it’s in my phone. He answers and I’m so relieved. I say, “I’m lost. Can you help me?” I tell him what I’m looking at and he guides me home.

I don’t even remember why I left the house. Did I need groceries? Did I want a walk? Was I bored? Sometimes, I’m fine with letting days pass in the void. But I’m not used to being unproductive.4 And the isolation makes me sad. So I go out. Maybe that’s why I went out that day, to try to quell the sadness. Everyone I have seen so far has different advice. One doctor says to do what I can without allowing myself to become symptomatic. That’s a guessing game I lose almost every day. Another says to rest in a dark and quiet room. One tells me to sleep whenever I want, whenever I can, because the brain heals while sleeping. Another says to sleep only at night. I follow the advice that appeals to me because I begin to suspect that no one really knows anything.

I cry on the way home.5 I try to be discreet about it. The last thing I want is to have some kind person ask if I need help. Yes. I need help. I need more help than anyone understands. I need more help than even I understand. But I don’t want to be looked at. I don’t want to be assessed. I don’t want to be judged. Because I will be found wanting. I’m beginning to feel like my mother, who was a fearful woman and quite possibly agoraphobic. She had a very small life and treated every outing like a series of potential disasters. I do not want to become my mother.

Maybe that’s why for a long time, I was heavily invested in passing as a non-brain-injured person. I still can. I look fine. But if I’m honest, all too often passing does more harm than good. I don’t get the help I need.6

My inability to navigate is part of a larger constellation of symptoms that have to do with executive functioning. About eighteen months into my concussion, a neuropsychologist will use the phrase “disorganized thinking.” I couldn’t have found that phrase on my own, but I recognize it as correct. Someone else says “non-linear thinking.” That works too. Everything comes to me as a tangent, a diversion, a footnote. Even before that, an occupational therapist will tell me I’m having trouble “sequencing” and I will spend six months doing puzzles and worksheets that match items in column A to column B and playing with blocks like a child. I will learn to replicate patterns. In the months ahead, I’ll ruin countless meals because I can’t follow a recipe. When I bake, I might as well lay all the ingredients on the counter and slide them straight into the garbage to save time. I’ll “develop strategies” to “cope with my deficits” and they will backfire. (Is the baking soda on the counter because I used it already or because I still need to use it?) But on this particular day, the day that I am lost just blocks from my house, failed baking is still ahead of me and all I can think to do is call my husband to help me get home.

| The first time I got lost was the morning after the car accident. My husband and I were in Vancouver. He was there for work and we used his trip as an opportunity for both of us to visit our daughter. The morning after the accident, he had meetings. I got up after a miserable, sleepless night spent reliving the shock of impact, sore everywhere, bruised, but grateful no one was seriously hurt. I had no idea.

I didn’t see the accident happen. I was in the passenger seat looking at my phone, navigating us to the place we were staying. (Recently, I have wondered if I get lost all the time because I was using my brain to navigate when it broke, and, since those neural connections were in use, it was this part of my brain that took the biggest hit.) The rental car was wrecked. At least that wouldn’t be our problem for long. Luckily, we had insurance. Some paperwork would take care of it.7

That next morning when I went outside, I couldn’t understand why the sun was so bright. I walked a bit until I realized I wasn’t sure where I was and, if I walked much farther, I wouldn’t find my way back. The thought came with that odd hair-standing-up-on-the-back-of-my-neck feeling, that kind of intuitive jolt that says “pay attention.” I figured I must still be in shock, so I turned around and went back to where we were staying. I told myself that resting for a day after a car accident was something any reasonable person would do.

The following day we returned home to Toronto and while my husband had completely shaken off the accident, I had not. Could shock last two full days? My brain was foggy. I noticed that I couldn’t understand the signs in the airport pointing to gates and baggage claim. I didn’t say anything because I couldn’t understand what was happening to me.

I started to realize I might be in trouble.8

| Three and a half years later I still get lost, although rarely in my own neighbourhood. And when I do get lost near where I live, I’m only a little lost. It’s more like a brief disorientation than being absolutely adrift. I get my bearings and I’m on my way again. I’ve learned not to panic.

In unfamiliar places, I’m hopeless. Left and right were uncertain concepts for me until well into my second year.9 And don’t get me started on north and south or east and west. It makes travel difficult. People are kind, though. They offer directions when I ask. I try not to dither. What no one realizes when I ask for help is that I can only retain the first instruction they ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents Page
• Brainstorm: how we got here: E. D. MORIN & JANE CAWTHORNE
• I | Where to Begin
• II | Am I Getting Better
• III | No Longer the Person I Was
• IV | I Dream of Swimming
• V | Carried Through All That
• Acknowledgements
• Notes
• Contributors