Head Cases: Stories of Brain Injury and Its Aftermath

By Simon Lewis, Truthdig. Posted October 22, 2008.

Filmmakers often treat knocks on the brain as slapstick comedy, from Buster Keaton's pratfalls to the Three Stooges' choreographed head blows and, more recently, Ben Stiller's parody of Simple Jack, the "retard," in "Tropic Thunder." Even kindly Charles Dodgson treats the Hatter at the Mad Tea Party of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," shifted in his consciousness because of mercury-induced lunacy, as a figure of fun. But one of that book's disturbing insights is that, for a Hatter with dementia, time itself stands still.

In the real world, there's no humor in insults to the brain. Chronic pain is a common complication, and tragedy often results from the suspension of time and consciousness in our skulls. Traumatic brain injury, or TBI, knows no rules, follows no timetable, recognizes no age or cultural boundaries, whether the victim is Muhammad Ali, Stephen King or someone you've never heard of. A brain injury strikes someone in America every 20 seconds, some million and a half times a year, from falls, car crashes or assaults, and at least 25,000 U.S. military members in Iraq and Afghanistan have suffered such injuries from explosions, shrapnel and other causes.

Whether a brain injury happens in a moment that goes unnoticed -- perhaps an unfelt mosquito that vectors a neuropathogen into someone's bloodstream -- or is part of a catastrophic loss of consciousness, it challenges a soul from that moment forward, a life changed, perhaps into decades of psychosis and suffering that prove Gerard Manley Hopkins' insight, "No worst, there is none."

There are 5.3 million Americans living with disabilities from TBI, and it takes an average of $4 million, over a lifetime, to properly treat one.

To this biblical plague of mental, financial and societal devastation, Michael Paul Mason's "Head Cases: Stories of Brain Injury and Its Aftermath" brings vital initiation, through his selection of 12 amazing patients; 12 apostolic accounts of lives of innocence uprooted by unimaginable experience, which Mason explores with awe, passion, humanity and skill. This elite case manager chooses perfectly from his Sisyphean caseload to show the myriad ways that brain trauma destroys lives: " 'I am a brain injury case manager,' " he tells the mother of a victim, "and there is the hint of a smirk because we both know that brain injuries cannot be managed any more than a thunderstorm can be managed. They can be endured, accepted, and integrated, but not managed."

Mason is part spiritualist and part advocate, a care coordinator to those who, in an effort to avoid the typical aftermath of brain injury, seek out the hospital where he is based: "The sequence of events goes something like this: the brain gets damaged, and two months later, the million-dollar insurance policy is depleted and the patient is shuffled out the door with a shrug of shoulders. A course of treatment that should have lasted years is cut short before it even starts. ..."

Mason describes men and women whose TBI has caused deficits across the range of human experience, and who show heroism in the truest sense: good people who face insurmountable odds. The most powerful accounts may bring tears, as when Mason evaluates an amnesiac suicide survivor, institutionalized for 16 months. A few well-chosen words reveal the patient as victim of brain injury and medical system alike: "If I were to take just one morning cycle of Daniel's medication," Mason notes, "it's likely I wouldn't wake up for days, possibly ever."

In one of the book's most unusual cases, Mason learns from his own patient when he enters a native American inipi, voyages into his own soul, and in the final round of the sweat tent, at somewhere near 200 degrees, gives up on his family, his home and all else: "I give up on this fucking job with all its fucked-up brains that must be saved and can't be. I give up on healthcare reform, I give up on advocacy, I give up on hospitals and nursing homes and institutions and prisons. ... I give up until there's nothing left to give up."

Therein lies the book's main frustration. For readers in search of aid, it's important to recognize that this book raises more questions than it answers; hints at available neuromodulation devices and neurorehabilitation programs. Given the importance of these devices and programs to countless survivors and their caretakers and families, and Mason's great skills as storyteller and guide, it's a lost opportunity to discover science-based diagnosis and treatments that work. Nonetheless, his great stories take readers through the elements of head injury diagnosis, from treatment protocols at Balad Hospital in Iraq (the literal front line of TBI treatment) to some of the facilities and resources in America. His cases range from an air traffic controller whose brain tells him that he is dead, to cases of seizures and rage attacks, to a man in prison for a crime he can't remember because of a pathological injury to his brain.

See more stories tagged with: health, dementia, traumatic brain injury

Simon Lewis is a survivor of traumatic brain injury and is finishing “Rise and Shine: Finding the Hidden Path to Full Recovery,” his account of unexpected tragedy and regeneration. His Web site is http://simonlewis.us/.

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