Biopsy of Ed’s Head Injury

Hi my name is Ed, at the age of 21 I was a student at the University of Wales, Swansea, studying Psychology. In my second year during the Easter holidays I was out with my cousin and friends on the 12th of April 1996, when I was assaulted by someone who stabbed a snooker cue into my right eye socket. Luckily the cue squeezed past my eyeball sparing my eye. Unfortunately though the cue pushed through the wafer thin bone behind the eye and went deep into my brain until hitting the rear top of my skull, roughly in line with the outer edge of the ear. So in turn I suffered a serious brain injury. Resulting in damage to some specific brain areas; most concerning to my right frontal lobe affecting a diverse range of brain functions from ability to filter emotions effectively, as well as on going problems with executive functions, prospective memory problems, attention as well as other cognitive related difficulties. However as well as specific damage there was also a holistic effect in that as specific systems were down other systems failed to run as they relied upon those systems to run, as the brain tried to interact within itself.
The Injury itself sent the brain into shock resulting in 7 years plus of depression and a general inability to interact with the world around me. I had suddenly become a greatly reduced version of myself.
On top of this I found I was unable to move my left side normally as I’d also incurred dystonia in my left side limbs, a movement disorder where by the brain sends abnormal messages to muscles making them contract. Basically my left hand and foot scrunch up making me effectively one handed at times as well as walking often in a lot of discomfort.
Reaction to injury and its impact on myself and my life compared with before.

Lying in Hospital I had no sense of what had happened to me as far as I was concerned I was still me, except for an overwhelming sense of gloom which transcended every aspect of my human existence, however on leaving Hospital it began to become apparent that I was not entirely my old self; my ability to handle busy situations, my personal perspective on whatever was going on around me at any time was vastly inadequate almost childish, People reacted to me differently, I found I was unable to keep up with people and communicate on a real level with them. I found over the first few years I struggled to rationalize why I suddenly couldn’t behave or interact with people the way I had all my life. Then roughly 7 years on from the injury I felt a distinct improvement and from then on a gradual dampening down of the depression despite the ongoing difficulties and painful mobility issue.

Brief history of life since injury – rehabs

For the next eight or so years I found myself skipping between living at home with my parents and boarding at rehabilitation centres around the country. Rehab was good for creating a structured focus in an environment with people that had some understanding of my predicament or in the case of the other clients’ actual relatable experience of my situation. Then, eventually leaving the rehab system, to end up doing many different courses, mostly arts based courses as I thought it would be therapeutic for the damage to the right hemisphere of my brain mostly associated with creativity and artistic ability. This was then followed by many different voluntary jobs over a period of several years.

Hopes for future

I am now 13 years on from that fateful night in April of ’96 and feel that I have made huge improvements but am still without work or seemingly a purpose in life. So when Dr. Sherrie Baehr, offered me the opportunity to join her charity, Silver lining, and go to Namibia to help at a school for orphans with a team of people who had suffered brain injury as well, I jumped at the chance to be involved. As it was clear to me that Sherrie’s project had been set up by someone with a good appreciation of the needs of people after a brain injury. Not to mention the opportunity to make a contribution to the lives of children less fortunate than all of us in the west.