How do you know when you have recovered from traumatic brain injury? When you go back to work at your old job? When you learn a new task and perform it better
than most?

Is there a way to measure learning to walk again?

I think the clearest way to self-knowledge in recovery is setting a goal and achieving it. I had to learn to walk again. The first goal was to take four steps between parallel bars, with someone in front of me and someone behind me. That is still one of the most difficult physical efforts I have ever made. Helped by the rehabilitation center staff, even, and still the most difficult physical effort.

The most difficult psychological effort, in contrast, came when I was alone, when the rehab staff was not present, when the rehab staff had not even anticipated the difficulty and planned for it.

I had been hit by a car while crossing the street at a crosswalk. Others think I’m strange or silly because I repeat that “at a crosswalk” every time I mention the accident, even to someone who knows that’s how it happened.

Why repeat something that everyone knows?

I had to learn to cross the street all over again. If a car clipped the corner or eased through a stop sign, I would start yelling at the driver. Often I said, “Pay your insurance.”

Maybe some background would help make sense of this.=

The place I found to live–oh, that’s another story–had a beautiful location just south of the drive that took one up into the mountains surrounding Salt Lake City. My apartment was on a top floor with a balcony and a spectacular view of the Salt Lake Valley, ringed by mountains, reaching out to Great Salt Lake and Antelope Island. If only I never had to go down to the street, never had to get anywhere, never had to watch the drivers ignore the stoplights and speed through the intersection, never had to cross the intersection, I would be fine.