When I joined the Peace Corps in 2007, I knew that my two years of service in Malawi, Africa would change me. I imagined many possible changes. Maybe I would finally become substantially thinner — from some strenuous life of building . . . huts or something. Certainly I would become smarter — from a combination of real exposure to different parts of the world and a lack of electricity that would clearly make me read more books.
Don't mistake me for superficial or stupid. I also had greater hopes and dreams for my growth — that my heart would grow with love for new friends, and that I would learn how to plant the seeds of life correctly to see possible answers grow. Notice I mention growth. I expected it. Isn't that what we can always depend on as time passes by? I imagined moving forward. Growing backwards isn't possible, is it?
Service in Malawi ended for me in a car accident in 2009, two months prior to my scheduled flight home. I hear it was a real bad accident. I have no memory of it. Entering a coma for a month was the end of my service. I was lucky that, in waking from the coma, I got only two labels of shit results — a traumatic brain injury and a broken jaw. These are what I brought home with me after two years of service.
My jaw is better, just wired together forever. My brain injury remains. I try both to fight it and to accept it every day. I see many different kinds of doctors that attempt to classify and help solve the change in my brain. I do want to solve it, in a way that probably is not exactly possible.
Classification: I tested SEVERE in impairment of Abstract Thinking and Reasoning. Abstract Thinking is defined as "Ability to demonstrate insight into a situation, processes for reasoning in situations that are intangible." To have insight and to discover a way to reason out an intangible situation sounds a lot like philosophy. Ironically, I was a philosophy major in college. Have I lost the percentage of understanding that I maybe once possessed?
Everything is a percentage since my traumatic brain injury. I break it down by number, every day. Today my physical recovery is at 90%, while my cognitive weighs about 80%. Last night I got 10 hours of sleep which leaves my brain feeling 94% well rested.
My family would dispute my claims of change in myself. "You are NORMAL, Shana," they would repeat, as if my true impairment was actually my inability to understand that I am the same.
In some ways, they are right. It is my self-view that has changed the most. And although I want those who know me and love me to recognize how I am indeed now different from how I was, the best compliment that I received since my brain injury was from my cousin Matt. Upon seeing me for the first time after my coma and started recovery, he hugged me, looked into my eyes, and said, "You're still Shana!"
Ah, yes! Thank you! I may not be the same, but I am still me. Why does that mean so much?
Let me ask you. What makes you YOU? What makes you feel 100% you?
