News
To Love What Is
My husband is a gentleman and a sweetheart. Since his social skills, long-term memory and delight in life are pretty much intact, he is charming and considerate with people he knew before his fall.
But when a new companion arrives, for the first few weeks, until her face begins to look familiar, the constant presence of a stranger at his elbow can provoke in him such bouts of agitation, cursing (disinhibition) and combativeness that many a potential companion has quit on the second day."
In this particular passage, the author writes about an incident where her husband–who has poor short-term memory–has erroneously reasoned that his young, attractive assistant is also his mistress. He can't explain her presence any other way, it seems. The predicament illustrates just how complicated TBI can be–it forces us into situations far outside of social norms.
To Love What Is underscores a strange paradox about brain injury–that ultimately, it takes a tremendous amount of heart to heal a head.
