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I'll Carry the Fork! 

recovering a life after brain injury

Staff Mini Review

I'll Carry the Fork is a delight.  Kara Swanson's  descriptions of life with brain injury had tears streaming down my cheeks - a rare occurrence.  If you're ready to laugh and cry and "ah-h-h" in recognition, add this book to your list.

But read and see for yourself.                         sl

by Kara L. Swanson

$16.95

 

The curious thing about the auto accident that ended my life was that I lived through it...

Evelyn Wood would have been proud.  The first time I decided to read a book after the accident, I made it down the first page in seconds flat.  I tried again, more slowly this time.  I read the first sentence and the next.  And then, as if I were reading in the back of a truck while driving over the potholes of a Michigan springtime, I bounced around from line to line.  I read the words in the middle and a few here and there, at the beginnings and ends of sentences.  I closed that book and simply launched it.  Right through my kitchen.  With my cat running for cover and my dogs startled from their sleep, I experienced the first of many snits that would later be termed "bouts of inappropriate anger"...

I was detached from this person that didn't work right anymore.  I didn't like this person.  I looked at my legs with a strange curiosity as they ignored my commands and slopped and sputtered.  I felt like an impostor.  I feared that the longer this new person leased my body, the closer she came to owning it.  And I was scared that people would forget, that I would forget, the person I was before...

And others didn't understand.  How could they?  They couldn't see the hundred and one things I was doing behind the scenes to present myself as normal.  I looked the same (except for the extra poundage).  I didn't talk on the phone or entertain guests when my speech was really bad or my head was breaking concrete.  I nodded through conversations.  I was scared to admit to myself, much less to them, that things were really wrong.  I still felt that "mild" meant minor and that I was a failure, somehow, for not being better by then...

My attorney wrote me a letter and likened my injury to a symphony orchestra.  He said the tests could tell you if all the trumpet players were present or if the string section was accounted for, but they could not tell you how well the musicians communicated with the conductor, or how each individual was playing. He explained that with a head injury, all the musicians might be present, but some might not be playing, or not in the right key.  Finally, I was starting to understand.  I imagined that half my orchestra was playing Beethoven and the rest of those lazy bastards were in the dressing room eating pizza...

I hated my inability to drive.  I hated the fact that I could no longer play basketball.  I hated the pictures on my wall that taunted me with the person I had been.  People would joke that I should install a towrope to the corner, or hitch up the dogs and sled to the store when it snowed.  I laughed.  I knew they were only trying to keep me laughing.  But it stung.  The kind of hurt that burns the cheeks and quivers the lip.  The kind of hurt that waits until everyone is gone and you're alone and fragile, to pounce on you with foot-long claws...

No, I don't wish this injury on anyone.  Yes, it did end a life that was comfortable, successful and pretty enjoyable.  But I am so very lucky to have a second chance.  I learned important lessons that didn't demand death as payment.  Many cannot say that.  I have, finally, chosen to embrace this second life not as a consolation prize, not as a tragic sentence, but as a great gift.  I may not be proud of how long it took me to get to this point.  But I made it, and I'm grateful I didn't arrive too late.

Kara L. Swanson

I'll Carry the Fork

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