I Wanted My Brain Back Sherri Dalphonse, Washingtonian Magazine (page 5 of 5) Page 5 of 5

One recent Christmas at her cousin’s house, Anne found herself following conversation, even though ten people were talking back and forth. Everyone in the room looked more in focus. She asked her cousin if the dining room had been painted. It hadn’t. To Anne, everything was clearer and brighter.

It’s a sunny day, and as Anne and I take seats at an outdoor cafe, she says: “I’ve forgotten everything we talked about.”

This is early in my reporting, and we’ve exchanged a phone call and a few e-mails. Anne points out the places in her organizer where she wrote down reminders about our lunch, and shows me the bag she carries the binder in. “I got a nice-looking ... ”—she picks up a black bag and studies it for a few seconds—“purse.”

While most of us don’t think about how our brain works, Anne is keenly aware of hers. She knows that answers to my questions might take days to percolate to the surface. It’s something she’s learned to live with.

Anne still can have trouble retrieving words, especially when she’s tired. She might call eggs “waffles.”

“We all have times we can’t finish a thought,” Michael says. “It happens all the time with her.” He admits that it can be frustrating if Anne, grasping for a word, starts her thought back at the beginning: “I try not to do what couples do and finish each other’s sentences.”

It probably helped that Anne learned

to do crosswords; she and Kathy now do the New York Times Friday and Saturday puzzles, the toughest. Anytime you learn something new, it builds and strengthens neural pathways. Anne now also does sudoku.

Seven Years: Back to Work

Anne and her cousin Sandra plucked clothes off the racks at Ann Taylor—a pink blouse, a pink-and-white skirt, black pants. Anne hadn’t worked in a Washington office in years. She wondered: What did women wear?

This was spring 2004, after she had landed a volunteer position at the Brain Injury Association of America in McLean. Once a week, Anne takes a bus there from her house in Arlington.

Through BIAA as well as the Speaker’s Bureau of Brain Injury Services, another nonprofit, she’s made speeches at hospitals and universities. While Anne might need help writing speeches, many of which have been directed to neuropsychology students and rehabilitation specialists, her message comes through: Do not give up on braininjury patients.

She wants people to understand, she says, “how tough a battle those of us with brain injury are fighting just to get through the day.”

She also provides support and advice to a woman who suffered a brain injury. “Many head-injured people get upset to find that there’s such a disconnect between what they think the doctor can do and what they actually do,” she says. “They get bitter. That gets you nowhere.”

Those close to Anne are not surprised she’s driven to help others; that part of her never changed. “Anne is the kindest person that I know,” Michael says.

Anne has accepted that she’ll never work as an economist again. She loved economics because it used her brain to teach people better ways of doing things. She feels she’s doing that again.

Carol Salzman, a friend and her internist, says she understood her own sister’s brain injury better because she’d read Anne’s speeches. “I was glad to have this information to tell my sister she wasn’t nuts,” says Salzman, who is now tuned in to the subtle changes mild brain injury can cause.

Last year—almost nine years postaccident—Alec Lebedun, impressed by the progress Anne had been making, got her into speech-language therapy at Inova Fair Oaks Hospital. “The Inova system has an excellent reputation in terms of brain injury,” Lebedun says.

“They see that even though I seem high-functioning, I need help,” Anne says. “The difference between struggling on your own to keep rehabilitating and having someone say, ‘No, you should do this,’ is huge.” Insurance paid for eight months of therapy.

Today: In the Driver’s Seat

In the parking lot of Bishop O’Connell High School in Arlington, Anne sits behind the wheel of a gray Acura TL. She inches the car forward, no faster than ten miles an hour.

At Mount Vernon, Anne’s occupational therapist had worked to rebuild her eye-foot and eye-hand coordination until Anne’s responses were good enough to drive. It would take more practice for her to remember things like signaling a turn, which involves multitasking and planning.

With Michael at her side, Anne coasts around the parking lot. Her first outing lasts ten minutes, and even though she would be exhausted after, for Anne, those are ten thrilling minutes.

While she continues to practice driving, friends and neighbors are also showering her with advice on another path: motherhood. She and Michael are hoping to adopt a baby from Guatemala.

“It will push on some of my symptoms. I’ll have to take my own time-outs,” Anne says. Erin Nolan, her speech-language pathologist at Inova Fair Oaks, prepared Anne with weeks of sessions, including planning and storing meals. “With memory problems, putting things in the freezer meant they never came out, because I would forget they were there,” Anne says.

There still is much Anne cannot do that once came easily. Last summer, she got back on a bicycle again, the first time in years, and rode for 20 minutes. She would like to work more but gets tired—although acupuncture has boosted her energy.

“The healing process isn’t ever over with brain injury,” says Nolan. “You might not see any change for years, then things start to improve. It’s the mystery of the brain.”

That’s the thing about brain injury: There’s a lot of uncertainty.

“There’s a long period of time where you don’t know who you are, because your brain’s not working and your brain defines a lot of who you are. You have to refind yourself,” Anne says. “If you just look at the dark clouds, you won’t move forward. For years I didn’t feel my life was meaningful. It’s meaningful now.”

From the Washingtonian Magazine. Reprinted with permission. Third-party use restricted. www.washingtonian.com.

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