Catherine H. Transcript

My name is Catherine. I’m from the UK originally, but I’m living in Geelong, Australia, which is near Melbourne. Before my injury, I had traveled all around the world. I had been working in America at summer camps for eight seasons, in California. I’d done a lot of travel around the US. I’d traveled a bit around Asia. I’ve traveled all down the east coast of Australia and moved over to Perth. I’ve done, yeah, a fair bit of travel. At the time of the injury, I was working as the educational leader in a childcare center. I was also doing my teacher training to become a kindergarten teacher. I was really passionate about it. I was really, really enjoying it. I also had- I’ve always had a very active social life. I’m a very busy person. I enjoy being out and exploring and things, and I suppose the other big part of my life was playing the piano. I’ve played piano since, well, I’ve taken lessons since I was eight, and done all my exams, and I would play the piano for two hours at a time, sometimes, but I would play every day, and it was, yeah, it’s been a huge part of my life. 

So in May 2020, I was driving to work in the afternoon, I had taken the morning off for a doctor’s appointment and driving along a two-lane highway doing 100k which is about 70 miles an hour, and I was in the outside lane, and there was a car on the inside of me that I was sort of overtaking, it came up to an intersection that crossed the four lanes of the freeway, if you will, of the highway, and one car came up to the intersection, moved over to the left, to turn left and join us on the highway, and just as I reached the intersection, another car came out from behind that car and went straight through the stop sign and just went straight across the-across the freeway at the highway, and I knew that there was nowhere I could go. It was either going to be me or the guy on the inside of me that was going to hit this car, and it was me. So I went from 100/75 miles an hour, whatever it is, 70 miles an hour, to zero against the back door of her car. I don’t think I did, but if I did lose consciousness, it was for a matter of seconds. I really don’t think I did. But yeah, I came to a stop, and suddenly there were people at the car door telling me I needed to get out because there was something leaking from underneath the car, or something. And anyway, I eventually got taken. They took me to a hospital, and scans showed a C2, bilateral non-displaced fracture. 

Three months later, I was diagnosed with PTSD as well following the crash. Now it was May 2020, at the time, which meant COVID was just beginning. Unfortunately, that did affect my treatment. I was only in the hospital for a few days, because they needed the beds for COVID patients, and so I was sent home. The borders were closed. All my family are in the UK, so they couldn’t visit me. We were in lockdown, and so I couldn’t really have any visitors. So my partner, who was now my husband, but at the time, we’d been together about two years, which is not a long time, to suddenly become someone’s full-time carer. I couldn’t dress myself, I couldn’t wash myself. I couldn’t lift my arms above, like above my shoulders. He just, he had to do everything for me. But at the time of the crash, they did CT scans of my brain as well, and they were all clear, and I didn’t notice any sort of brain injury symptoms for a good, good few months, mainly because I hadn’t, I hadn’t been moving around. Um, I’d been in a neck brace. I couldn’t move my head. I was-I had to move from the shoulders, and so I hadn’t really been moving around, so I wouldn’t have noticed any dizziness or anything like that. And then the little that I did, the bit that I did experience, I thought it was down to the vast amount of pain relief I was on. 

I started experiencing dizziness, feeling faint, memory loss, word-finding issues, intense fatigue, which was debilitating, amongst other things. And I learned that there are three things that I didn’t know about brain injury. One of them is that you don’t need to lose consciousness to have a brain injury, which I thought you did. And two, you don’t even need to hit your head to get a brain injury. I didn’t, but the intense like the sudden deceleration from going at that 70-odd miles an hour to zero and being thrown forward with enough force to break my neck, and my brain would have bounced off the walls of my skull. It would have ricocheted, causing bruising at a cellular level, which brings me to the third thing,  that a clear CT scan doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s been no brain injury, because the damage can be done, as I say, at a cellular level, which isn’t picked up by MRI or CT scans. I think the technology is in its infancy, but it’s used more for research rather than diagnosis, and I think only in the States at the minute, but I’m not sure on that one. 

But yeah, it was nearly five years ago, and I still get those symptoms that I mentioned, and they call that now post-concussion syndrome, which is, what I’ve been diagnosed with now, and they don’t know why some people suffer a concussion and the symptoms persist into post-concussion syndrome. There are certain risk factors, some of which I fell into, some of which I didn’t, but there’s-they don’t really know why. Some people’s symptoms just carry on and carry on. And so I guess there’s a lot of research I think that still needs doing into that to find out why The symptoms, as I mentioned, I still get fatigued. I have to take rests every two hours. And when I say rests, I don’t mean sitting, and playing on my phone. I mean rests, eyes closed, silence rests, like watching movies for someone with a concussion, is not rest. I did have people earlier on in my recovery saying, Oh yes, it must be nice to watch Netflix all day. No, that doesn’t help, but yeah, so I do get the fatigue. 

There’s been some sort of damage to the messenger systems between my eyes and my brain. My eyes are fine but it’s something to do with the Depth. Depth perception is just ever slightly off, and so I wear these tinted glasses. I went to a behavioral optometrist who was fantastic, and he sort of got me on this machine and tried all these different colors, and different tints to find out exactly, exactly what shade I needed. And it came up with these. I now don’t wear them all the time. I wear them when I’m on screens, and I wear them when I’m reading, or if I’m on the piano. It’s something to do with the darker, dark like say darker words on a page, my brain thinks they’re ever so slightly closer. Closer than the white bit behind it, so it throws everything, all the messaging system, off-kilter, and I do actually, I will wear them out if I’m tired as well, because all my symptoms get worse when I’m tired. So sometimes, if I am out and about and really tired, I will put the red glasses on again, just to give me a little bit of help, I also have earplugs for being out in public. 

I’m frozen, this happens, even though it’s all written down, and (that’s okay.) 

It’s like, it’s like the I know what I want to say, but there’s more than one thought that, and I can’t it like it freezes. I was talking about the earplugs, because, I–lots of noises affect me, not loud noises, but lots of noises at the same time. So say, I am in a restaurant and I’m talking to you, and there’s a conversation going on at the table next to us. I can’t really distinguish between what you’re saying and what they’re saying, and I’m trying to understand both. And so I wear earplugs, loop ear plugs. They’re out of the brand, but I wear loops that block out the background noise when I’m in busy places, so they really help. 

I also struggle with my blood pressure, which is a bit messed up when I’m changing levels. I noticed that if I’ve got pet rabbits, and if I’m on the floor, like either playing with them or cleaning their litter trays, and I then stand up, I get really dizzy. That black my vision cloud in my head goes heavy and yeah, I have to lie down. And sometimes it can last a few minutes. Other times it’s – it can last longer. It can last an hour. I’ve been to the emergency room twice with it because it’s lasted so long that it just hasn’t gone so I’ve had to go and get it checked out. But they’ve, again, they’ve found nothing specific no scans or anything. I also struggled with getting in and out of swimming pools as well when I did my hydrotherapy, or if I’ve been swimming, and I don’t know if it’s because the weight is being held by the water, and then you get out and, yeah, so I think that messes it up. 

Dizziness, word finding, which has just happened. Yeah, it is like I get if I’m–there are two different thoughts, and they normally I’d be able, I would have been able to, like, go, oh no. I’ll say that next, but I’ll say this one now. It’s like, I can’t. It’s like, almost like a decision paralysis going on in my brain. Like, what do I say now? And everything freezes and nothing comes out of my mouth. And so that is still something that happens less now, but it is embarrassing and more like most 99% of the time, people are absolutely lovely, but it’s still difficult. So yeah, I’ve had a lot of help to go through. I mean, in that particular instance, my neuro-psych has been fantastic, and my neuro-psych also helped me get through the–I was studying to become a teacher, and I did persevere with that for quite a while after the injury. My neuropsychologist was fantastic in helping me organize strategies to complete because I was studying online all the online content, and I could manage that. But what stumped me was the practical elements of the course, because for somebody who struggles with too many noises and lots of movement and finds that overwhelming, a kinder classroom is possibly one of the worst places you can be. So unfortunately, I have, I did have to give up my studies, and I have lost my– had to give up my career in early childhood education, which took a long time for me to come to terms with. 

But yeah, my neuro Psych was fantastic in helping with that and the word finding. I’ve also done physio like vestibular physio and neck physio, exercise physiology, which I’m actually going back to, because I have issues with exercise tolerance. Once my heart rate gets too high, I get dizzy and blood pressure and the world closes in again and I have to lie down. So I’m actually going back to an exercise physiologist to help me more with that. Cccupational therapist, also helped me through, like studying and just life in general, organizing when to have my rest times, and try and organize life around my fatigue and around my other symptoms. And the clinical psychologist helped with the PTSD and things like that.  I was diagnosed by a psychiatrist, but my treatment is through the psychologist, the behavioral optometrist that I mentioned for my eyes, hydrotherapy, which I mentioned before, so that was part of the physio program and a pain specialist, but that’s mainly for my neck and my neck related headaches. So yeah, I have seen a lot of people for it, and it has–one of the things that is difficult about it is that it is invisible. You can’t, I don’t unless I’m wearing my glasses, you might think that you know there might be something. I need them for a reason, but otherwise, I don’t look like I have any problems. 

That is why I like to wear this sunflower lanyard, which has been really, really helpful to me, and so it’s called the hidden disability sunflower lanyard. It started off in the UK. It’s very well known in the UK, and it’s, by the sounds of things, it’s making its way to America slowly, and it’s just sort of finding its feet in Australia and New Zealand. And what it does, it sort of indicates to people around that the person wearing it might just need a little extra time, might need a little extra patience, and maybe, like, if you’re on a bus, maybe offer them your seat. Maybe they do need your seat, even though they don’t –They haven’t got crutches or anything visible like that, um, and it has been really useful to me, especially whilst traveling. I did manage my first trip back to the UK. And this was fantastic. The second I landed at Heathrow Airport, I think I had six people come and help me, like, Do you need anything? What do you need? And it was fantastic. They like, got me because airports being especially overwhelming places, I think, with all the noise, the echoes, the lights, just the general busyness of people moving around everywhere that is difficult, to focus and things like that, and so it has been really, really helpful to me, and I think for other people suffering from concussions, I think that’s something that could be really beneficial, because you can’t see it. You don’t walk around with I have a concussion written on your forehead. And there’s also they can have a little like pocket at the end of it that you can put your details in and details of how you how you struggle, which was, again, really helpful whilst traveling, rather than explaining what post-concussion syndrome is, because it’s still quite not very well-known. And I could give this little card to anyone in the airport. They could read wor, finding, overwhelm, fatigue,-they knew exactly how they could help me without me having to stutter through it. 

I suppose one of the other things about having an invisible condition, an invisible condition like a concussion is you sort of, they call it a mild traumatic brain injury, don’t they, a concussion? It took me a while to realize that mild doesn’t mean it’s mild. It doesn’t mean that you don’t suffer. It’s just mild in comparison to other ones over to like, more severe brain injuries. But it doesn’t mean you don’t suffer. And because people can’t see it, I have suffered with imposter syndrome a lot. Then I’ll think, oh, you know, maybe, I’m not too bad. Maybe I am making a fuss of it, because that’s how I’m made to feel at times. I remember I was in a bookshop somewhere, and I was talking to the person that owned it about a book that I’ve written, which I won’t get on to in a bit, and but this anyway, long story short, this fella basically told me that I don’t look like I’m injured. I don’t look like I’ve got a disability. And I was really hurt. It threw me completely. And then I started stuttering, and I couldn’t explain myself. My mind went blank. And then after I left, I was so, so angry with myself as well for not being able to tell him that not everybody has to, not everybody who’s suffering is diagnosed with PTSD. I was encouraged to start journaling, to sort of, yeah, get my feelings out there. I know a lot of people find it really, really useful, um, but at the time, it wasn’t working for me. I found it too confronting to write down. This is what happened, and this is what made me feel, how it made me feel. So I sort of went back to, so when I was in the UK, I did a degree in drama and imaginative writing, and I did a unit on poetry. So I began to write poems about how I was feeling about my injuries, what actually happened on the day, my anger, and my difficult challenges, I should say all these different things, and I could sort of look at it as if one of my uni lecturers had given me an assignment like write a poem from the point of view of a woman who’s been injured in a car crash. And that way, I could distance myself from it and talk about how this woman might feel, and then when I had a piece that I was proud of, I could sort of link it back to myself and reread it and all these feelings, these difficult emotions that I had within me, were now out on the page, and they were organized and structured in a nice way, and so I could understand them.

In a lot of cases, I’ve been able to let certain things go. And now recovery from anything is not linear. With a concussion, you can feel like you’re doing really well, and then suddenly, boom, something happens, and you feel like you’ve taken two steps back. And so I’m not saying that every time I was able to let things go permanently. For example, I still have days where I’m angry at the unfairness of what happened to me, but it’s less now, and I can understand now that tomorrow is another day, and I might feel like this today, but tomorrow I might feel different. So yeah, so I was able to instead of journaling, write poetry instead. Now I am, at the moment, involved with an organization, charitable organization in Victoria in Australia called the Amber Community. Now they provide free support and counseling for anyone who’s been involved in road trauma. And it doesn’t mean it can be somebody who’s actually been in a crash. It can be their carers, it can be their friends and family. It can be witnesses, it can be emergency services, anyone who has been affected by road trauma in any way. They offer support and free counseling. Doesn’t matter when the incident occurred. There’s no time limit on it, and they also offer therapy groups and at the minute, I’m doing a writing group called Road to Hope with them. And actually, I’m learning to journal, and I’m learning to write about my experience. So I think the poetry has been a step towards getting me to be able to do that. And all the things that Amber community do, they have what’s called an art program road trauma awareness seminars, which is for people who have been committed driving offenses, and they have to do safety seminars as part of maybe their court order or whatever sentence, whatever their situation is. And so where I come in, I am a lived experience volunteer, so I will go in front of them and tell them my story, which is challenging because I can’t hide behind poetry at that point, it’s me, but I would not have been able to do the road trauma awareness seminar and tell my story, had it not been for the poetry, there is no way I had– there is no way I would have been comfortable being myself in front of all these people, if I hadn’t been able to use poetry for a few years before that to get me up to that stage. 

So I started writing poems about a year after the crash, I believe it was, and I caught a–so I started writing poems about a year after the crash, and as I say, I wrote them about how I was feeling the crash itself, the changes in my life, how I felt about that, and I realized that I had, like quite a collection in my poetry journal. So, I decided to self-publish, and I left the book in diary form, in journal form, with the date, so that I can see and the reader can see how I’ve progressed and how my feelings changed. Because, you know, we are always evolving, and so my opinion at one stage is very different from how it was a year later on certain issues. So it’s nice to be able to look back and see how that’s changed. It’s called The Ballad of the Bunny, and Other Poems The Diary of a Car Crash and Beyond. the title comes from one of the poems, The Ballad of the Bunny. So when, at the time of the incident, I had had rabbits for about nine months, and they lived in a hutch outside. And then, after the crash, I felt like I was going from somebody who worked in childcare and looked after everyone. Suddenly, everyone had to look after me. And, so my husband had the bright idea of moving the rabbits inside so that they could keep company for me because I was suddenly on my own and it also gave me something to look after, which was a huge boost to my self-esteem. And so the rabbits have been such a huge part of my recovery. They were part of the story of the crash, actually, because I’d had one of the rabbits in the vet on the day of the crash, she’d just been desexed, my girl, and I was actually going to bring her with me to work on the day of the crash because I thought I’ll only be there for the afternoon. I’d rather keep an eye on her. And then the crash happened, and I’m so glad I didn’t. I only decided at the last minute that I wasn’t going to bring her with me, because she wouldn’t have survived that. But yeah, the rabbits have been a huge part of my recovery. Highly. Huge believer in pet therapy. Research has shown that just stroking a pet can lower stress levels and things like that. And as I say, there’s entertainment, there’s comfort, there are listening ear that never disagrees with you. They entertain you, and they give me something to look after. And so the title came as the book, The Ballad of the Bunny came from a poem of that name, and that was the story of how the crash happened. But I couldn’t talk about it at the time without getting upset, so I wrote The Ballad of the Bunny as the story. It was an allegory for what happened on the day. It’s the story of a rabbit who someone doesn’t mean to, but they step on her paw, and she ends up like her life has changed. And because that’s the story of where, like, that’s where it all started, really, I thought that would be a good one to name the book after, yeah and I explored a lot of grief, grief over the old me, the me that was never, never going to be a teacher, the me that used to go out all the time, that used to travel, and the grief of what I’ll never, I will never have, they’ve sort of said that my condition has sort of reached the best as I’m going to be. 

I still think there’ll be changes. I still think that over time, but it’ll be very slowly, but I won’t go back to teaching and things like that. And so there has been a lot of grieving. And then sort of about a year ago, my sister in the UK, she had a pet pig that she absolutely adored. He was wonderful, and he was with her, through a lot of emotional, sort of difficult times, like my rabbits were, and he died. So I wrote a poem for her about his life and things to sort of to look after it. But as I was reading it, I’m looking at it and thinking a lot of this is relevant to my life as well. I mean, it’s not a life that has been lost, but I’ve lost things as well. And I think grief is-grief is grief. Yeah, the situations are different, but the emotions are very similar. So I ended up, this year, publishing that as a book, that is, it’s a children’s book, but it’s designed for families to talk to understand grief and talk about grief together. So it, yeah, it is written as a children’s book, but I feel like it helped my sister, you know, when the pig died, and actually, one of my rabbits that had been with me through the crash and everything died in August, not longer after I’d published that book, and it helped me. I was like, oh, so maybe, maybe it is a help to adults as well. But I also did the illustrations for that myself, which I also found that art therapy has been–Art as therapy was so helpful to me as somebody managing a concussion, it was nice just- I’ve lost my words again. I’ve gone off on a tangent that isn’t written down, and I’ve confused myself. — Yeah. So I have started, I did, I understand why people use art as a form of therapy, and it is very soothing, and mixing colors and getting that, that gratification of seeing something come to life in front of you has been really helpful. And I’ve actually, on the back of that, signed up to an art therapy group, which, again, run by the amber community that they’re running later in the year. So I thought, Oh yes, I think that that would be really good for me. So I’m really looking forward to that. And so I suppose, all in all, it’s um, all these things, the writing, the art, the pets, the sort of standard therapies, and they’ve all sort of got me to accept that this is a new path. It’s my new path, but I’ve got, I had to accept that in my own time, you can’t rush anything. And the life of a writer has given me that fulfillment that I needed. 

And so I finally have accepted and said goodbye, and yeah, accepted not being able to be a teacher, but yeah, it’s-I wouldn’t have been able to do it without all these different things and okay, if I suppose it’s finding what works for you because what works for somebody might not work for somebody else. For example, I’ve been using since the very early days of my recovery. I’ve been using the calm app, and my psychologist recommended it originally for the sleep stories because I was having horrible flashbacks that would happen just as I drifted off to sleep, and then I jolt awake, panicking and everything. So having a sleep story playing has meant that it gives my brain something to focus on, and so I wasn’t-and then I was able to fall asleep. And even though I don’t suffer from those flashbacks, particular flashback time anymore, and it is, it’s like having, like being a kid again, and having someone read a bedtime story to you, who just happens to be like Matthew McConaughey or someone, and so I also use the calm app for my rest, and they have particular meditations that are of different lengths. And so I will use, like a 10-15, minute meditation several times a day, and then I can just close my eyes. It gives me something to focus on again, and it’s quiet and it’s soothing and it’s, yeah. It really works the same way as audiobooks. I found that audio books really work, especially given that a lot of people with concussions may struggle with difficulties with your eyes, if you love reading, doesn’t mean you have to give up reading. Audiobooks are just so much easier and also, it helped me, because with my neck issues as well, I couldn’t stand looking at a book like that with my neck in that position it hurts, so I can find a position that’s comfortable, wipe my earphones in, and it’s so much easier. But having said that, all concussions are different. 

So if I had any advice to give somebody who had suffered a concussion recently, and be it one that you think it’s oh, you think it’s not, you think it’s not major, you think it’s not, it’s nothing. They’re all an injury, and they’re all different. And so if something doesn’t feel right, trust your gut. Don’t be afraid to ask for second opinions, as I say, even brain injuries don’t show up in CT scans at all times. So, you know, you know your body best, and if something isn’t right, I advocate for yourself. It can be difficult. I really know it can, but it’s important. I’d also say, celebrate your victories, any victories that you have whilst you’re recovering, whether they’re big or whether they’re small, like one of my biggest victories earlier on was being able to follow a recipe and make a dinner that was edible. So, from something that I wouldn’t even have considered a thing before the injury, it was a major thing. And then, of course, getting back to driving again was my possibly one of the things in my life that I am most proud of, because of the injury and the PTSD I did have to go through. I had a specialist, OT driving specialist who organized a program for me and put me in contact with a specialist driving instructor that she thought I would get on with, like she had someone who was around my age, and, yeah, we just got on really well and I did. A heap of lessons in a dual cab car, and so that if I had an issue with either my one of my physical symptoms or an emotional reaction, then she could take over. So that’s definitely something that I’d recommend. So don’t give up hope. And above all you, you’re not alone.