I was reading a fascinating article today in a magazine and discovered that I have not only got ADHD, but could also have PABI - Paediatric Acquired Brain Injury - like ADHD it accounts for a lot of what is wrong with me - impaired judgement; difficulty concentrating; organising myself; finding it hard to take in information just by listening, I won't list it all.
At this point my loved ones are probably rolling their eyes and wondering when I had a brain injury because it is not something that has been talked about, and was certainly never diagnosed.
I think I must have been 8 or 9 because I am sure Pat wasn't more than 2, she was sitting on Mum's lap in the car, and we were on a family outing. My granddad was in the front passenger seat, Mum, Pat and I were in the back, and Dad pulled out to overtake the car in front. I must have hit my head and lost consciousness immediately, because I have no memory of the subsequent events, only of the oncoming car.
My Grandad was seriously injured because he was thrown through the windscreen, and he had been taken away by the time I recovered consciousness. When he got better and came home he had a deep scar on his face. Dad, I assume, broke his sternum on the steering column, he did later have to go to hospital for surgery on his chest. So me and my little head injury weren't exactly priority at the time.
Mum and Pat were alright because Mum would have seen it coming and braced herself for the impact, if there was in fact any impact. I never heard of anyone else, or another vehicle, being involved, but then the accident itself was never talked about, it never entered the annals of family history. It might have just been Dad braking very hard that knocked me out and threw Grandad through the windscreen. I think nowadays if one is concussed, or loses consciousness for a time, it is taken more seriously because brain injuries are now being researched and clinical trials are going on, especially since US soldiers have been coming home with traumatic brain injuries. Apparently changes in behavior come on so gradually that it never used to occur to anybody, 60 odd years ago, that someone had suffered a traumatic brain injury.
The article does go on to say that if one thinks one has had a brain injury, or knows someone who has, one should contact the Brain Injury Association of America. I might think about it, or I might contact the doctor who diagnosed my ADHD. The article goes on to say that the only way to diagnose a traumatic brain injury is to assess a person's cognitive function, so therapists spend hours testing everything from reasoning ability to recall of random numbers. Something taking hours would be a very expensive procedure in this country. Unless - as this is such a new area of research - they are looking for guinea pigs.............
Well, I am sure that it more than you ever wanted to know about PABI. I will write on more general subjects tomorrow.
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