TBI Marital Problems: Marital Help Fell Thru Cracks

TBI Marital Problems: Craig Part Nine 

To say that Craig’s TBI marital problems are a familiar story to me understates, the significance of that issue in my career. The first brain injured clients were not personal injury cases, but severe brain injury survivors who had been charged with domestic violence. In each of those cases, the violence could have been prevented with better rehabilitation, the right professional guidance.  Had I not been involved in those cases, I might have never understood (or believed) the nature of the disability and the TBI marital problems my first TBI personal injury clients faced.

Craig has Early Onset TBI Marital problems

Do you remember the TBI marital problems you were having with your wife that first eight weeks? 

Yeah.  Well, the struggles I think started because I wanted to be fine, so that every time I go to the doctor I say “I’m feeling fine.”   She knew things weren’t fine and the doctor wouldn’t listen to her and I remember that just irritated her.  “Yeah, I’m doing fine” and I couldn’t remember anything.  Basically I’d forget to put the car in park.  Thank God we live on a farm, it’d keep driving and…

So when you were initially discharged, you actually went home and they let you drive the car or. 

Well, she drove.  I started driving and she didn’t want me to drive and we fought about all those things.

Wife Leaves Craig Because of TBI Marital Problems

So then if this camp is in November, when is it that your wife leaves you? 

Right after Christmas.

So you’ve got about two, three months period where you can remember some of what’s going on where you’re actually having TBI marital problems with her? 

Yeah, we’re fighting about it.  And I couldn’t sleep and I keep her up all night, trying to figure it out, processing it, just trying to put all these memories back and I was just trying, I mean I, she wasn’t sleeping.  She needed to work. I mean it’s, it was hard deal on her.

It sounds like there was a lot of anger going on back and forth. 

Yeah, I mean. She obviously thought I’m doing this purposely insulting her.  I never really insulted her in the past, but just one thing after another.  You know, it would escalate.  We didn’t have any systems in the place to stop (that kind of interaction.)

I had good insurance.  And I remember we went to a neuropsychologist and I was supposed to get my evaluation and they, miss-did the paperwork and we ended up in marriage counseling.   You could imagine how that worked for us.

And I think that was the key, that really fall back, because now we’re dealing with things we really shouldn’t have been dealing with at that moment in time, but neither of us knew.   We thought well, this is what they want.   Then six weeks into the marriage counseling, the neuropsychologist went “oh, I’m so sorry, you slipped through the cracks.”  I hope you had some benefit from that.  At that time, if I’d known what I know now, I would have had a few words for him.

So you went to a neuropsychologist but he thought you were there for a marriage counselor. 

I went for the appointment and  he was out sick and the gal said, oh I can help you.  It was just coincidentally just circumstances.  Then they caught the paperwork back because my doctor complained and,   he admitted, oh I made a mistake.  And uh, so, he got my evaluation going.

Next in Part Ten – Return to Work Only Bright Spot Post TBI