Brainstorming With Brooke

 Trips are always good subjects for posts. They are fun in general, but travel with a disability and a traumatic brain injury adds another layer of complexity beyond the already daunting task of traveling with three children spanning eight years in age. in January, we headed to Whistler in Canada for Martin Luther King weekend. I got to ski and snowshoe in Whistler.  I've skied adaptively many times since my accident. This was my first time snowshoeing. My TBI impacts ski in two fundamental aspects.   From a physical perspective, I can't walk without a brace and hiking stick.  As a result, I'm not clipping boots into skis as a person without a disability would. Instead, I use something called a sit-ski.  It is exactly what it sounds like:      People with TBIs often have difficulty regulating their body temperatures.  A lot of people are cold when they ski; that's not uncommon.  I wear thermals; a sweater; mittens with handwarmers; ...

     Before I get too in the weeds about traumatic brain injuries and their resulting impacts(the subject of this blog), I should say something about how I incurred mine.       I was in a car accident. But, it wasn’t an ordinary car accident. I was hit by an ambulance driving to work on a Sunday. I went through a green light. The ambulance went through a red light with no lights and no sirens. Lesson learned: don’t go to work on a Sunday if you can avoid it. I wasn’t on a phone. At the time, I had a BlackBerry. Even though everyone else had abandoned them in favor of iPhone: I had not.  I'm showing my age.  Somea e familiar with a BlackBerry device: BlackBerry     In order  to complete a message, using the QWERTY keyboard of a BlackBerry, you needed to use both thumbs simultaneously, which you obviously cannot do while driving.       The impact of the ambulance was severe enough that they dispatched another ...

 I never intended planned--of course--to incur nor live with a traumatic brain injury. (TBI).No one does.  Since I am lucky to have survived, my attitude is to work hard to reclaim as much of my pre-injury life as possible and even to embark on new experiences that I didn't before (mostly because I barely had time to breathe between working and raising children.)  While I  can't run the San Francisco marathon like I did many years ago, I can and have walked a half marathon with a cane; use a treadmill; ride horseback. I have done all three after my accident. (I rode horseback as a child but had not been on a horse for twenty years prior to my accident. Now I ride every week.  It is true that the way I do these activities does not look like someone without a disability does them.  But that doesn't make them any less of an accomplishment. Many able-bodied people never ride a horse nor ski. These activities are challenging for me in differing ways. Both are im...