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I Found Peace of Mind Online After a Traumatic Brain Injury

A terrifying car accident left me feeling powerless, until I found answers on the internet.
Samantha Rogers

It was an early Saturday morning on May 31, 2014, and I was driving home from visiting some friends out of town. I had worked all week and hadn't slept well the night before. I felt myself becoming too tired, so I made the wise decision to pull over and park in an empty parking lot to rest. I rested about an hour or so before I woke up and decided I could continue on.

The last memory I have before I found myself confused —covered in dirt, grass, and glass, after my vehicle had rolled and flipped off of the road—is leaving the parking lot.

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Dazed from the multiple blows to my head and barely able to speak. I remember being terrified, because I had never been in an accident. I was frozen in my seat, unable to move from the vehicle until the paramedics and firefighters got me onto a stretcher. I was repeatedly told by the first responders and police officer that when they come up to accidents like mine, they're not usually speaking with the individual that they pulled from the vehicle—this is when I knew I was extremely lucky to be alive. March is Brain Injury Awareness month—a fact I wouldn't have known three years ago, before this happened to me. But traumatic brain injury (TBI) affects millions of people. Here in Canada, 425 people suffer from TBI every day. In the neighboring US, an estimated 1.7 million people sustain brain injuries every year, and 52,000 of them don't survive.

Having a brain injury can make you feel very isolated, especially with so many big changes to your life, but I found that while doctors, friends and family were helpful, the internet was the key to my ongoing recovery.

A concussion is the most common form of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and symptoms are often resolved within a week or two. But in some cases, symptoms persist (and even worsen) for months and years after the injury occurred—which is what I have personally been dealing with for the past 34 months. In cases like mine, the diagnosis of severe concussion gets "upgraded" to post-concussion syndrome and the recovery from this can last months, years or a lifetime.

I had sustained mild concussions prior to the "big one" (thanks to snowboarding) and I seemed to recover just fine in a week or two, so I was expecting much of the same thing with this recovery. How does the saying go? "If I knew then what I know now" I wouldn't have suffered by trying to "push through" the symptoms for ten months, before finally seeking more help from doctors. Once I learned from my doctors that I could be faced with these post-concussive symptoms for a long time, I took to the internet to learn as much as I could. Through my first information gathering session online, I came across the documentary called The Crash Reel, which details pro snowboarder Kevin Pearce's journey with TBI. Through this film, I learned so much about TBIs, its effect on the person injured and the effect it has on family and care takers. I also learned about the LoveYourBrain community through this film.

What Kevin and his brother Adam have done with their experiences by starting LoveYourBrain , has connected those affected by TBI through creating a (predominantly online) community. Through promoting brain injury awareness, yoga and mindfulness meditation as tools to utilize in recovery, the LoveYourBrain community has truly impacted my recovery (and millions more) for the better. Upon learning that practicing mindfulness meditation and yoga (yin and restorative practices) would help me in my recovery, I was a little overwhelmed as to where to begin. I wasn't well enough to go to a yoga studio and learn through group classes, but I did know that on YouTube there would be guided meditations and yoga videos for me to use. I also came across an app called Calm that is loaded with guided and unguided meditations, sleep stories, and breathing exercises. I use this app on my smartphone every day, multiple times. Due to my TBI, I experience sleep issues and anxiety and these symptoms are very much eased by the techniques and programs this app has to offer. While it has been important to limit my screen time and give my brain ample rest, I have found the internet to be extremely beneficial to my recovery and subsequently to my quality of life post-brain injury. It has allowed me to take charge of my own recovery. Knowledge is power and before I was loaded with the knowledge I now have, I definitely felt powerless in my journey—and that's something that I have come to learn that many folks feel at one point or another throughout their TBI recovery.