Tbi: More Than a Brain Injury, It’s Relationship Damage

The man I married bought me flowers. He would surprise me with sweet, little gifts. Whether it was a freshly picked wildflower or a Hershey kiss, it was always given with a smile, big, green eyes shining brightly, “I love you,” and a kiss. I’m talking the kind of kiss that has rewritten history. He always kissed me with an ardent passion that always left me weak-kneed, slightly dizzy, and always yearning for more. That man with that ravenous passion does not exist anymore.

Five years ago, my husband returned from a deployment in the Middle East a changed man. He would get enraged over little things. I’m talking the eyes bulging voice loud, deep, and so filled with an intense rage that I was scared he would hurt himself kind of enraged. The sweet, carefree man full of hopes and dreams simply disappeared and this almost stranger that I found myself married to was not the kind of man I would have fallen in love with, let alone married.

It was a very trying time for both of us. It took three years and another deployment for him to get a diagnosis: Traumatic Brain Injury, TBI. Specifically, he had received a shockwave brain injury. His case manager explained to us that when he had been hit by the shock waves from multiple IEDs (Improvised Explosive Device) his brain got a little rattled.

 The front of your brain rests on three bony protrusions, almost like three thumbtacks, just not quite as sharp. When he was injured his brain rubbed against those, kinda violently, and there you have it…instant, yet unnoticeable serious brain injury. His case manager put it in layman’s terms for us. Imagine a bowl full of jello, stick a spoon in it, and then shake it for a few minutes. All around the spoon, the jello turned to mush. When it resets, it’s still jello, but it has been reassembled. That is what happened to his neural connections.

Through his long road to recovery, he had to retrain his brain so that new connections could be made. He had to relearn how to think, how to remember. If you’re an Army Wives fan, then you know a little about what he’s going through, but if you know from personal experience, then you know it’s not as easy for the rest of us as it is for Joan and Roland.