Posted on June 1, 2011 · Posted in TBI Voices
This entry is part 13 of 20 in the series Jeremiah

Mood Issues after Severe TBI: Jeremiah Part Fourteen

There was quite an emotional continuum from the time Jeremiah started as an outpatient at Meriter to where he is today.  I asked him about the emotional swings and his ongoing mood issues after Severe TBI :

Well I had, I always try to, to think of things in the best way in my own mind, albeit the outside.  I try to process it and project it the best way as I can.  Now it’s not to say I don’t feel hurt inside when something hurts by any means, I feel as hurt as anybody, but what, I’m sorry, I forgot what I was thinking.

Let’s talk about the highs and lows emotionally and your mood issues after Severe TBI over the last eight years.   What’s the lowest that you’ve been emotionally?

Well I’ve never thought I’m not going to be here, as far as I would take my own life, but I have wondered why in the heck am I even here, because so many things go wrong against me all at the same time, and you’re like why is it that I survived only to experience all this bad stuff all the time?  So that’s the low point.

Has that low point with your mood issues after Severe TBI been there periodically or was it just in the first six months?

No I, it’s periodically.  I mean, but the thing about now, nowadays periodically might be from the low point of, you know, being taken advantage of as opposed to your own difficulties internally.  After having experienced all the internal difficulties of dealing with your own disability and body and everything and mind, you realize that you might have to always deal with that.

The ones that push you after the fact, after these first year or six months or whatever, and even then they pushed you obviously, but are the external inputs – The, the people that don’t mind saying hey, you know, you can walk and you can talk so to me you look okay, which I wrote in my song, one of them.

Next in Part Fifteen – Pluses and Minuses of Seeming Normal

By Attorney Gordon Johnson

About the Author

Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
Past Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447