Secondary TBI

TBI wives will know what the title of this post means. It's a term we use with each other as our best way to describe what has happened to our poor brains and it's met with a laugh and a nod as other TBI wives know what we're talking about.

Secondary TBI is felt when we get to that point where information, ideas, and 'things to do' start falling out of our brains. It's when we have filled our brains with SO MUCH that anything else leaks out. We don't control what leaks out, when it leaks out, or how much leaks out and we only discover it's missing when we are reminded of what we forgot. At first it happens slowly and we may think "Man, I better get more organized" and we write things down and program our phones. Soon we forget where that sticky note is and forget to enter something into our phone and after that happens over and over we panic "What am I going to do??? How can I stop this?". Following our failed attempts to stop this inevitable process, when we've gotten so used to having to make excuses to everyone we've let down, we come to accept this as our own "new normal". We've progressed to the realization of "Oh crap, whatever! There is nothing I can do about it" and that's when we know we have somehow caught our husband's injury.

I say that all with sarcasm that I hope you can hear because of course, we cannot catch our husband's injury. I'm sure our problem is probably caused by some manifestation of burn-out or just the pure math that one can't possibly be the brains of two people successfully for any length of time. Oh well, such is this life :)