France T. Transcript
Hello, my name is France Theriault and I am a concussion bloomer, who used to be a survivor. In 2013, I was training with my cycling team in order to ride 200 kilometers for a fundraiser with the Princess Margaret Hospital to raise money for cancer. On my first day, a few kilometer on my right, I was going uphill. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and the sunshine was coming through the trees on either side of the road. On my descent, as I was riding around 40 Kilometer I was getting legs at some speed, and when I arrived at the bottom of the hill, I didn’t see but there was a pothole and my front wheel got caught in the pothole and I was ejected.
What I’m about to tell you, I don’t remember. I have amnesia. I have dissociative amnesia due to the shock of this injury. So I was told that when I was injected from my bike, I twirled in the air, I hit the ground, and after that I landed on my left side. I ended up lying on the road in a fetal position. And while I was there, a cyclist behind me or didn’t have a chance to maneuver around me, rode over my left legs. She fell but she was able to continue her ride. I was not unconscious. I was talking. I was able to get up and I was transported to the nearest hospital where I had a CT scan and an MRI. Everything was fine. I was declare safe to go back to the resort where I was living for the weekend. And the diagnose was a traumatic brain injury, a mild one. So I was 48 years old at the time, I was healthy, athletic, fit. And the prognostic look very well, looked like I will be able to recover very quickly however, that is not exactly what happened. My team was with me up north so after they sent one person with me to the hospital, they continue on their ride and I saw them at the end of the first day. I was bruise. I was confused. I had a lot of head pressure. And over the days over the months over the years that follow I had a lots of anxiety, confusion, sleep disturbance, short term memory, fogginess, I went to a very long depression had neuro fatigue, tinnitus, sensibility to light and sound, I had vision issue, cognitive impairment, and trigeminal neuralgia.
My reaction after the fall after the crash when I came back to reality, even though I was not unconscious, I lost like a few hours of time, of the day. When I came back to reality, I was in physical pain. I was completely confused, lost, and I didn’t know what was a concussion. I had no idea. I was also a certain that I was going to get better almost immediately and things will unfold perfectly. However, it is not exactly what happened. Over the last 10 years I had made a made amazing progress, but at the beginning I was completely isolated. I spent a few months in the darkness in the basement, isolated by the fact that I couldn’t see my friends, I couldn’t also participate it in my family’s life, I had emotional disturbance, cognitive impairment, I was tired, I was also very fragile in so many ways, and I was confused. I remember looking at myself in the mirror and seeing my reflection. However, I didn’t know what this person I was looking at. And it was really confusing and very scary for a long, long time.
At the time, I had one child who was a teenager who was living with us, with with my husband and I. And I think for him it was very difficult because he lost his mom. In so many ways. I was not the mom that I used to be. And he told me later on that he felt abandoned by me. As for my partner I feel that he didn’t really understand the severity, the gravity, and what I needed at the time, so he was not really present. He was not capable of giving me what I needed in what I was looking for. It was extremely difficult because I was seriously counting on him to be there to support me to assist me to make sure that we were going to go through this together. However, this event made a big gap between the two of us and it never recovered. As for my family, my extended family live in a different province in Canada so they were far away. So I didn’t have a lot of support by them. And I had at the beginning, for a few days, a few weeks, I had some support from my friends who came to bring food to me and to make sure that my son was okay. I couldn’t drive so some of them like helped me to go to the doctor or to the various appointment that I had until I was able to be able to drive by myself.
The experience that I have with the medical professional or almost none after being diagnosed with traumatic brain injury from a doctor, I saw a chiropractor and many practitioner of alternative medicine. I didn’t really see any doctor and that was the way that I went through my recovery journey, looking to find people who could assist me mostly without any medication. At the time I was a stay at home mom. I was not working outside. However, my partner was an executive. So I had a lot of stability and I was involved in my community in various projects, which I was not capable to pursue after I had the brain injury. It took me a long time to get back to volunteering and to be able to contribute in some ways.
As for my lack of recovery, it’s very difficult for me to answer this question because 10 years later I am still affected by some persistent symptoms. Very little at the moment. I really gain a lot of my skills and a lot of my cognitive abilities. And my emotional state is much much better than it used to be. But it has been a process a long, long process.
And what I would like to share with you is after I had the brain injury, I started a spiritual quest. This Cataclysm in my life, was an invitation to reassess my life to look at what I wanted in life and what values and what traits, personality traits, I wanted to develop. And I for the last 10 years I’ve been on this journey of self discovery, self improvement to discover Who is this new France? not the one who was there before the cycling accident, but the one that was looking to emerge after I had a brain injury. And this person that I am right now is different, different than the person that I was, and I’m so grateful for that. I always say that having a brain injury made me a much better person. I have a lot more empathy. I have a lot more understanding and more curiosity about others. And the way that I see life as being tinted with a different color than I used to have.
I would like also to share with you that this journey was and still is an amazing exploration, an exploration to see what could I create. How could I use the suffering the changes the wisdom, the insight, that I gained through this journey to make a better life for myself and to impact the people around me in my life, to people in my community, and also to advocate for other people who are going in this journey.
I also started to be very interested to observe nature, to observe around me the beauty that I was surrounded by. I always love beauty, but it became an ense after the brain injury. So in 2017 I started to to share my journey of post concussion syndromes on social media, sharing my day to day life, to inspire, to educate, to educate and to also raise awareness about this invisible injury.
A big turning point for me was in 2019, when I started to do neuro optometric rehabilitation, commonly call vision therapy. I did four blocks, 16 months, of neuro optometric rehabilitation, and it changed my life. It was six years after I had the accident. At that time I was still experiencing a lots of problem with my eyes, my left eyes, and I learned so much. I wish I could have found this modality before but everything happened at the right time, I believe, so there’s no hard feeling in this process. I felt that, you know, I regain cognitive function. I believe also I am much better like cognitively than I used to be. Being able to create new neural pathway was absolutely fascinating for me and it gives me also an idea of how could I overcome some challenges? How could I improve? It was a beautiful self discovery process.
How did I change? I changed so much. I am living my life at a different speed. I am looking to assist people, to encourage people, I am there to make a difference in this world and sharing a beautiful story, a successful story, about overcoming the challenges, so many challenges, after having a traumatic brain injury.
Some of my hobbies are hiking, taking photos, writing blog, giving talks, dancing. I’m just about to be published as a co author group. I have big dreams and I am chasing many of them at the same time.
The advice that I would like to give to someone always in this journey of recovery would be to never accept no and to follow your dream. Follow your dream, and even though it’s going to take your time and it’s going to be difficult. I will say, have your vision and talk about your dream and be also very conscious of the words that you’re releasing in the universe, because what you’re expressing is going to come through in some ways. So I believe that being able to have built my resilience, my courage, being able to be brave and authentic and vulnerable, are some of the gifts that I gain after having a traumatic brain injury.
I hope my story is inspiring you to keep going to find people who could support you, who could cheer for you, who could encourage you to keep going and keep focusing on what do you want? in this journey. I wish you the best because you deserve the best. Bye for now.