BLANK PAGES ON A MTBI LIFE

I was asked not to attend my granddaughter's birth. My daughter thought it would be too hard on me, and most certainly make her labor more intense. I understood, but I didn't like it. There isn't much to like about the way Mild Traumatic Brain Injury affects your life.

Since my diagnosis in January 2001, after a hard fall on a ski slope, I've had to learn to accept disappointment as a way of life. The things that really matter to me, like being in the birthing room with my daughter while she delivers her first child, have to take a back seat to my disability. I hate that word. Couldn't somebody find a more palpable way of saying 'you're not qualified?'� The actual definition, 'a physical or mental handicap, esp. one that prevents a person from living a full, normal life or from holding a gainful job,'� is anything but nebulous. The thing is; who gets to define 'normal?'� I am normal. I have learned to live normally with my 'disability.'� Most days, that is. It is days like today which remind me that I'm not totally living normally.

I woke up sometime around 3:30 AM, jolted by a very descriptive dream. I was vying for the enviable position of being a finalist in a reality-based TV program that awarded literary opportunists with an option to be published. As I think about it, that's a great idea (maybe I should keep this dream to myself). There were possibly 50 or so wordsmiths standing around. I recognized a couple from my writers group, but otherwise they were nameless faces to me. Each of us in turn ascended the steps to a dark stage where a lone microphone stood erect under an intense spotlight. We were given ample time to develop a pitch that we believed would wow the judges. My turn finally came and I remember walking toward the stage wearing a black skirt that revealed my shapely figure. It was part of my plan to get the judges attention, but probably too revealing for my age. I moved with confidence past my peers. In the background an audience cheered and whistled at me. Walking onto the stage, under the glare of the spotlight, I theatrically presented my prose then walked off knowing I had nailed my pitch. Straight-away, I saw myself in a mirror and realized that my face appeared older than it should. I was wearily wrinkled and my chin sagged agedly. The shape of my body, toned and fit, did not match my weathered face. I felt used up, left-over, and spent. In an effort to regain my composure, I began reciting my whimsical presentation, but it was gone. My mind was blank. As though it had never happened, I had no memory of the powerful presentation I had just inspirationally delivered. I awoke shivering under the blankets on this warm summer morning. I say morning, it was barely that.

Unable to return to restful sleep, I wandered downstairs and out onto my patio where I watched the quarter moon smile half-heartedly down on me. A cool breeze had kicked up and I sat quietly listening to the near-dawn sounds. That was when I realized that my restlessness had to do with the reality that in a few hours my daughter would go to the hospital to deliver her baby in my absence.

Alone in the dark, I rehearsed scenes of my life from the day of her birth until now. Marking all of the high points, I smiled at no one and the whole world at the same time. She is embarking on the journey that I took over 28 years ago. In those days no one was permitted in the delivery room except my doctor, the nurse, and my husband; who was too squeamish to manage the scene so he missed the delivery of his daughter.

I fretted for a while about the missing memory. Not the one in my dream, but the real-life one that I would not experience: The first sight and sound of a brand new baby girl. I'll never have it. My Mild Traumatic Brain Injury prevents me from living the 'normal'� life.

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