A Phone Call: An Accident: Brain Injury

By Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
Call me at 800-992-9447

For the Family of the Severe TBI Survivor

For most of you, it began with a phone call, a phone call telling you your loved one was in an accident. Thus begins the worst ordeal - the absolute worst kind of waiting - waiting to learn whether someone you love will live or die - waiting to know if they will ever be aware.  This webpage is written for those who wait. We also hope that it will become a resource for the medical professionals. Those professionals need to learn as much about "the waiting", what the families are going thru, as the families are now forced to learn about brain injury.

How can this web page help you? Well, we've got several ideas that we think are worth your considering. First, and our most important objective of this page is to let you know that you're not alone. The primary energy for this page came from someone like you who, 20 years ago, was sitting in that same waiting room. It was her mission, what she called her catharsis, to make sure that you knew that you were not alone. And, you're not just connected with us. You're connected with all of the other of thousands and thousands of people who have read this page over the years, have contributed to it and have made this page what it is.

My advocacy comes from a different place. It comes from the struggles and the connection I have with people who are where you are. For years I have been battling insurance companies, defense attorneys against abject skepticism and, frankly, serious efforts at misrepresentation and misdirection. But, I've also been battling doctors. I can't tell you how many times I've had people profoundly disabled where their doctors just didn't understand. And, the reason the doctors didn't understand, is that they didn't do what I did. They have not listened. They have not listened to the people who are telling them how changed this person is and, unfortunately, they think that the only person that they have to listen to about whether there is a brain injury, is the injured person. The injured person who rarely understands how profoundly disabled they are. They don't talk to you. They don't concern themselves with you, and that's because they don't do that that they haven't learned the things that are on this page. My advocacy comes from you, and it's for you that I've created this page.

As you begin your journey through our brain injury web pages, the best place for you to start may be with our brain injury stories. These stories are the contributions from people like you. Both http://waiting.com and http://tbivoices.com contain the experiences those similar to you went through and a collection of what they felt it was important that you know as you go through this. It is their effort to reach out to you who are in the waiting room now.

When my co-author is leaving the trauma center at the time of her husband's discharge, a new family was coming in - a family who had just had this tragic news of a brain injury and a coma laid upon them. As she walked out the door, she said to herself: "it is happening all over again." That was the motivation that drove her as we created our first version of this page, in 1997.

Hope and Honesty About Severe Brain Injury

Our webpages are pages of hope, but they are also honest pages. We want you to maintain hope as long as possible. We want to help you get through, but when the time has come that there really is no realistic chance that a coma will end, we also think someone needs to show you what the medical literature says about prognosis.

We also want you to know that if, pray to God, this coma ends, that the battle is not over. It is just beginning. If the coma ends, yes, that may be a miracle. Just as the CT scan, the helicopter ride to the hospital, the brain surgery that was able to repair that bleed, those were all miracles. But the miracle cure that you are praying for does not exist. Your loved one, if they've been in a coma, they have permanent brain damage and that permanent brain damage is going to change them and it's going to change your life.

I know you're asking the question" “Will I make it through this?” Yes, you will. Use our web pages to help. Use our web pages for your information. Use our webpages as a connection.

But, this is not a one-way connection. We are not just here giving you information. We are here stretching out our hand as you're holding that hand in the waiting room. We are here to hear your part of the story. We are here for you to tell us what it is you're going through so that we in turn can share this with others who will be coming in that door as you leave. And, above all, know that we as a community, we are here praying with you.

For our Primer on Severe Brain Injury, click here.

For Answers to Coma, What Now, click here.

 

Contact Attorney Gordon Johnson: 1-800-992-9447

This site is brought to you by the advocates of the Brain Injury Law Group, a community of plaintiff's trial lawyers across the United States united by a common interest in serving the rights of persons with traumatic brain injuries and a common commitment to fully understanding the anatomic, medical and psychological aspects of TBI.