The Camouflaged Heart

by Susie Guckin

Overview

I challenge you to believe that life isn’t about suffering; it’s about growth. Growing from our experiences whether they appear to be good or bad, is all part of living our lives. Consider that maybe our trauma is part of our evolution as a human being, not the breaking down of a human being.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781504330329
Publisher:	Balboa Press
Publication date:	04/20/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	116
File size:	1 MB

Read an Excerpt

The Camouflaged Heart

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By Susie Guckin

Balboa Press

Copyright © 2015 Susie Guckin
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5043-3031-2

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CHAPTER 1

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

We are often so busy surviving that we are unaware of how fragile life is and how quickly a traumatic event can alter our very existence. I was twenty years old when I was in two car accidents that happened fairly close together. These accidents changed my life tremendously. As I share with you my journey over the past fourteen years through traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress, you will be able to see not only the emotional and mental unraveling of a person, but also that person's amazing evolution through trauma. The first car accident seemed relatively simple and uneventful. A deer ran into the driver's-side front end of my car. The car was damaged, but it was nothing tragic. It was in drivable condition from the accident and so I returned home. I was shaken, but overall I was fine. There wasn't a scratch on me. The next day I played in a concert. At the time I was a music student, aspiring to be a music teacher. My lifelong passion to teach music and to work with children will become an important part of this story as it unfolds. My mother attended my concert that day, as she always did. When we arrived back at my apartment, I was feeling fatigued and drained, and I had a bit of a headache. I promised my mother that I was okay, and she returned home. The next morning she called me, and my speech was slurred. Although I was disoriented, I promised her again that I was fine. She knew better. My mother came right over and took me to the hospital. The triage nurses proceeded to ask the usual barrage of questions, only one of which—"What's your name?"—was I able to answer correctly. I could not provide my birthdate, my address, my social security number, or the day of the week. Wishing they would save their questions for someone who cared, I became increasingly angry and belligerent at their prodding. It felt as if my personal files were in my mind; I knew that I knew the answers, but for some reason I couldn't access the file, and the nurses were making it worse. I was taken in for a brain scan. While I was in radiology for the procedure, I threw up and passed out. The doctors diagnosed me with a concussion and told me to follow up with my primary-care doctor.

CHAPTER 2

EARLY SYMPTOMS AND ANOTHER ACCIDENT

There is a standard procedure in place for the care of a concussion. The primary care doctor knew exactly what to tell me to do at the time. My slurred speech, disorientation, and short-term memory impairment was pretty standard for a concussion. But several other symptoms showed up as well. I had slowed motor skills and coordination, as well as some sensitivity to sound and light. My doctor instructed me to take a couple weeks off from my college courses to rest at home. She told me to limit physical activity and to avoid doing anything that would tax my brain—including watching television, reading, and playing video games. For someone who had no recollection of hitting her head, this was a long list of symptoms and orders to follow. It was all rather baffling. But I felt that if I wanted to get better and get back to school, then I had to do everything the doctor told me to do. Besides, my focus was very limited; I felt far from prepared to do any of the activities that the doctor prohibited. I was extremely tired all the time. One moment I would be talking to someone, and the next I would fall asleep. My brain was trying to repair itself through rest, and I was doing everything in my power to support it.

Two months later I went back to school. I wasn't quite operating on all cylinders, but I was functioning and glad to be back. My motor skills were a bit slowed, but again, it was nothing that was going to get in my way for long. Reading and other tasks were also a bit difficult, but the doctor assured me that all of these symptoms would improve over time.

One evening, after dark, just two months after the first accident, I was driving back to school after a visit with my mother, and I was in another accident. I was traveling on a highway at about 65 to 70 miles per hour when there was a buckling noise. The hood came unlatched, flew up over the windshield, and broke the front end frame of the car where the hood attached to the body of the car. The force of the hood unlatching sent the car careening off the road. The hood had been damaged in the first accident, but it hadn't needed to be fully replaced. Instead, it had been banged out and reset. There was a small space on the driver's side where the force of the wind could have ripped the hood from the latch. I don't recall the accident—which is something I will discuss later—but at the time I told the state trooper that there had been a Mack truck to my right, and my car had pulled off to the right. I didn't know how I had ended up to the left, in the center median. The trooper couldn't believe that I was alive, without a single physical scratch. I had survived two freak accidents in a very short span of time.

It's known that if you have one head injury, you have one set of problems, as well as one set of orders to follow in your care and recovery. It is also known that head injuries are cumulative. The second injury creates a much more extreme set of problems than the first. My blurred vision was more intense than it had been after the first accident. The light and sound sensitivity were also stronger. I squinted often and felt very irritated by sunlight or any other bright light. I wanted everything to be dim. The best way that I can describe the sound sensitivity is that everything felt amplified, as if there were two megaphones up to my ears. Beeping noises were the worst, and crowded places were a nightmare. My motor-skill issues were now more pronounced. Unable to think through coordinated movements, I found myself dropping things, tripping over my own feet, and overall not feeling in control of my own body. The short-term memory loss returned with a vengeance. I was having difficulty remembering anything from one minute to the next. You could have a conversation with me, and two seconds later I wouldn't remember that you were even in the same room with me. You could call me five times in one day, and I would tell you each time that I hadn't heard from you in ages. I became lost in time and unsure of which hour it was—or sometimes even what an hour was. My doctor said that because I had had two head injuries so close together, my recovery time could be more than doubled. She recommended that I consider dropping out of school. At the sound of that, I panicked, cried, and said, "No!" Was I really to believe that I couldn't get better? That I would have to give up everything I had worked for because of two accidents that I couldn't have prevented? I just wouldn't hear of it. I didn't know how long it would take me to get better, but I wasn't going to give up on school. At that, we contacted my professors and told them what had happened. They agreed to "play it by ear" and hold my grades as incomplete until after the New Year, which was two months away.

I can't say that I was truly ready when I returned to school that January. I had spent the months leading up to that following the recommendations that the doctor had given me to rest as much as possible. I was still experiencing a lot of deficiencies. I was not allowed to drive, so I had to rely on friends to get from one place to another. My ability to concentrate was terribly compromised, and it was very frustrating. Again, it was as if my brain held files that just wouldn't open. I had trouble decoding words. I would see letters but not understand the word that they formed. I would stare and stare, trying to make sense of them, playing instruments was a challenge because my ability to read music was impaired, and my fingers felt like they had lead weights in them. No matter how hard I tried, they didn't move as fast as everyone else's.

Not every symptom of a head injury is something that jumps right out at you. Some take time to recognize and decode. For me, an impaired sense of direction was one of those. Until you are in a position where you must rely on your internal compass, you won't realize it's not working. When I had to navigate campus alone, I found myself getting lost in familiar places. I would stare at buildings as if I had never seen them before. I was too embarrassed to ask people nearby for help, and I couldn't remember where my friends lived on campus. Again, that file in my brain just wasn't opening. I didn't have access. Thank God for cell phones with automatic dialing. I would call my mother, and she would tell me where to go. One evening I actually had to call a cab to get home—and it's a good thing I had my address written down, or it would have been one long taxi ride.

CHAPTER 3

LESS OBVIOUS SYMPTOMS

I graduated from college with a degree in music. I had fought my way through the confusing and frustrating physical symptoms of my injuries that had caused motor skill impairments, headaches, coordination problems, and impaired vision. I was now embarking on a new job as a teacher in a very good school district. Remarkably, I had gone on the interview at the prompting of a former teacher of mine. He always had known what was best for me, and this time had been no different. After my very first interview, I had gotten the job—and the interviewers had said that there was something special about me. This had meant the world to me after all that I had been through—and was still going through. I was willing to put my all into succeeding.

Shortly after successfully completing my interview, I moved into my own apartment in a town nearby to the school district I was to be teaching in. It was a beautiful apartment on the second floor of a Victorian home. It had a screened-in porch on the top floor and a sweet, charming energy. It was only when I was truly on my own that I started to discover the deeper damage that my head injuries had done. Performing daily tasks was unusually difficult. I would wake up in the morning, sit on the edge of the bed, and wonder what I was supposed to do first. Then, still unsure of what was supposed to happen, I would walk into the kitchen, into the bathroom, and then back into the bedroom. The file was there, but again, I was unable to access it. I felt anxious, upset, and pressured by my confusion. I would then hurriedly throw on some clothes and run out the door. Halfway to my destination, I would realize that I hadn't taken my asthma medicine or made myself a lunch. It was a very defeating feeling.

In the wintertime, more symptoms began to emerge. My brain's wiring for the sense and feel of temperature was not working properly. I would run down the stairs to leave in the morning, see frost, and tell myself that frost meant that it must be cold. Then I would look down and realize that I wasn't wearing any shoes, so I would run back up the stairs only to stand there and, due to my memory deficiencies, forget why I had gone upstairs. I would then run down the stairs, go outside, and see the frost ... and the whole scenario would go on and on, until something finally kicked in and I would put shoes on.

At the time I had wonderful next-door neighbors who sat on their enclosed porch and drank their coffee in the morning. They saw me running in and out of the house, up and down the stairs. I was their morning circus. One day they invited me over for dessert. They made beautiful pies, ice cream, and berries to share. When I went to their house, my neighbor asked me if I had ever been in an accident. He said he had noticed me running in and out of the house every morning, and it seemed as if something was wrong. I couldn't believe it. I had been doing such a good job of concealing what I was going through—at least I thought I had—and he had seen right through it. I was stunned, but I answered honestly and told him that I had two head injuries from car accidents. Moments later his wife came out onto the porch with three books on the brain. They said they wanted me to have the books and hoped they would prove helpful to me.

I was grateful to my neighbors, but I put the books on my desk and didn't touch them for a while. Although my symptoms were an ongoing issue, I was functioning just fine at work. I was determined to succeed and took very seriously my responsibility to be on top of my game for the benefit of the children who looked up to me. I had to be their role model as well as their teacher. I wanted to see them succeed as well. My students were an antidote for me; they brought me joy that I wasn't feeling anywhere else in my life. I was in survival mode, trying desperately to live normally when there was nothing normal about what I was going through.

Long-term memory loss was another symptom that took me a while to discover. You don't realize what's missing—or how much is missing—until you are required to recall something that is no longer there.

I do not recall any of my life experiences prior to the age of twenty. I have recovered some minor incidents that occurred very close to the time of the first accident, but aside from that I have no recollection of my life prior to the accidents. I discovered this by interacting with family members, when stories would come up and I would be completely blank. They would prompt me by saying, "You know, you were there. Don't you remember?" But I really didn't remember. I had no connection to any of the events they mentioned. I would look at pictures with the hope that they would jog my memory, but again, nothing would come. The switch had been turned off and didn't appear to be coming back on anytime soon. This left me feeling lost in time. I had no recollection of where I had come from and was simply surviving each day with no emotional connection to people, places, and things I knew prior to age twenty.

Emotionally, I was blank and disconnected. To this day I have not recovered the long-term memories, although I am able to currently participate in conversations about my life prior to age twenty because of my family's efforts to teach me about my life. My family has shared many of my life experiences and events with me, but these are not stored in my brain as a personal memory. These experiences and events that they have shared with me are now stored as new information, so I am able to access the information, but I can't feel it the way someone feels a memory. There isn't any visual recognition or emotional connection to the information.

The long-term memory loss was particularly troubling for family members because my Dad passed away when I was fifteen years old. I had come home from school one day and my Mom and I had found he had passed quietly in his sleep from a heart attack at forty-four years old. This is one of the traumatic memories that was erased with my head injuries. I consider it a blessing to not have access to that particular memory, but it was confusing for some time to realize that I didn't know my Dad. I couldn't remember him at all and still cannot access the file in my brain that holds memories of him. However, through the efforts of my family I have learned about him and developed a relationship with him in spirit because I do believe he continues to watch over me, regardless of my memory loss. I also tend to think that the things I see in each of my brothers and sister are reflections of what he must have been like, especially in their sense of humor.

Memories can be a blessing and a curse for many people. Memories act as bridges to different times in our lives, but they also act as bridges between people. The long-term memory loss had become more of a burden to those around me who wanted so much for me to remember so that we could feel the bridge between us, but for me I was just blank. There was no connection. There was no bridge. I didn't know what was missing until it was brought to my attention that something wasn't there any longer. During this journey, I discovered that I was not carrying the burdens that many other people were carrying. I didn't have any bridges or connections to the past. I had a clean slate. There was a short period of time of approximately four to five months where I recognized that I had been given a "freedom" that other people around me did not have. I was not carrying burdens of the past because of my memory loss. This period of excitement and realization did not last for very long, as the realization and education that there was real damage in my brain began to set in.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Camouflaged Heart by Susie Guckin. Copyright © 2015 Susie Guckin. Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Dedication, vii,
About the Author, ix,
Introduction, xi,
Preface, xiii,
Chapter 1 How It All Began, 1,
Chapter 2 Early Symptoms and Another Accident, 4,
Chapter 3 Less Obvious Symptoms, 10,
Chapter 4 Symptom Specifics, 18,
Chapter 5 Overcoming Obstacles, 24,
Chapter 6 Seeking Help, 36,
Chapter 7 My Greatest Teachers, 41,
Chapter 8 The Process, 48,
Chapter 9 Fear As Fuel, 52,
Chapter 10 Dealing With Fears And Changed Relationships, 59,
Chapter 11 Experiencing Life Through New Eyes, 68,
Chapter 12 A Remarkable Coincidence, 73,
Chapter 13 The Camouflaged Heart, 76,
Chapter 14 Seeds of Service, 79,
Acknowledgements, 85,