By: Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

Anyone who has survived Traumatic Brain Injury, in themselves or someone they love, has also experienced the alternation and loss of the social and professional relationships which are part of what makes up our own, individual world.

If you are dealing with a brain injury for yourself or someone you love you will realize how much those relationships really mean.

What is the impact of not setting expectations, of just seeing what each day brings?

It can be a real conundrum: if I set my goals too small, they do not count for much.  If I set them too high, they cannot be achieved.  Uncertainty results in paralysis and then the worst possible solution becomes the default:  Don’t set any!  That leaves the survivor, the family and the caregivers each operating from different, unspoken goals and expectations—almost guaranteeing that they will each wind up frustrated. 

To our veterans returning with a traumatic brain injury:

Thank you for your service to our country.  Your courage, commitment and sacrifice are appreciated more than you may ever know.

As the celebration of your homecoming ends, you are likely to find yourself conflicted between the joy and relief of being home and the reality that you have returned a very different person—perhaps with apparent disabilities; perhaps with disabilities not apparent to others.  Recovery may be so difficult that you may at times question if there is real hope.

One day when I was 15 years old I lied to my family about where I was going, got in a car with an inexperienced driver, headed for Detroit, and was broadsided by a city bus.  I suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) caused by a depressed skull fracture.  I went into a coma.  The doctors who performed emergency surgery informed my parents that I was not likely to survive the operation.  If I did, I was not likely to regain consciousness.  If I regained consciousness, they expected me to be severely handicapped.