Portrait: Bruce
I was an intensive care specialist and a cyclist. Now I am neither. I hit a lamppost at 65 kmh.
A little bit about Bruce
What’s the scariest thing that ever happened to you? Do you have detailed memories of what happened? The sights, the smells and the sounds?
The danger is, Bruce, by fighting to remember the crash, you may also relive it.
Fear will do that to you. Humans remember frightening experiences in graphic detail. Intense bursts of brain activity create highly detailed memories and that way, we might avoid them next time. Traumatic experiences produce the brightest bursts and form the most vivid memories. Memories that can be graphic, leaving victims unable to come to terms with their fears.
Bruce’s take on traumatic events
What happens if you can’t be sure what you remember of the horror that befell you? What if others tell you their experiences of your trauma? What happens to your memories then? Does all that violence and emotional turmoil from many sources get melded together? Do the memories that you can recall, made up of real biological connections in your brain, arise from half-truths, nightmares, and hearsay? Does that make your memories a lie? Can anyone deny what you remember?
I have spent five years gazing at a reflection of myself in a shattered mirror. Each shard reflects a fragment of my past. Some shards are missing, and those memories are lost. Other shards reflect painful, terrible times. Each shard offers clarity, but also more questions. The overall vision is one of disarray and fragmentation, turning a coherent image into a frustrating puzzle.
The scattered mirror fragments distort and contract the images they capture, making the world within seem erratic and unsteady. I reposition myself in a desperate attempt to garner a whole picture, ultimately yielding nothing but partial glimpses. The missing pieces create voids that I must reimagine to complete the image.
The power of writing
Writing serves me as a potent tool to address and reconstruct fractured memories, offering a therapeutic avenue to confront, understand, and potentially integrate fragmented recollections into a coherent narrative.
Writing has served me as a bridge over the tumultuous seas of fractured memories, providing a means of reconciling the past and the present, offering the potential for a sense of closure.
Writing offers me an opportunity to heal. I am still grappling with fractured and conflicting memories, a labyrinth of paths between fact and fiction. I have sought objective truth and embraced subjectivity to weave this story together. I have only ever had one brain injury so I'm no expert. I have cared for hundreds of critically ill patients, but only been one once.
I am the only one in my clinic who does not need a wheelchair and I am grateful for that. I also feel guilty. I am lucky, I know that. I am also grateful for all the care and support I have received. I was reborn the day that I crashed my bike and broke my neck, my spine, arms and face, but the brain injury remains the unseen challenge that I confront every day.
What am I going to do? Give in? Nope, not me. I choose to move on and I choose to be happy. It's my choice and I am grateful for that.
Bruce’s story beautifully images the invisible aspect of brain injury. It also conveys an aspect that is too often left unaddressed which is how a traumatic event can affect you to your core.