traumatic brain injury survivors physical, speech, and occupational therapy group

In 2011, I was in a car crash. A really bad car crash. So bad that I spent 7 weeks in a coma and 4 months total in the hospital, after surviving a severe traumatic brain injury. Once I realized who I was enough to beg to go home, they let me out. I still couldn’t walk, talk, or move normally in a big way. I remember clutching walls to stay upright. I spent weekdays in physical, speech, and occupational therapy near Bradford beach in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. At the treatment center, I met tons of other patients. One guy I met was waiting at a red light when his car was hit by a drunk driver. He was in a wheelchair, and could barely move his limbs, which were in awkward positions . The drunk driver only got 2 years behind bars. Another 23 year old girl who I would see in art therapy blew a red light with her friend and now sits in a wheelchair struggling to squeak words out of her drooling mouth. I remember thinking, “that could have been me. A different person, a Caucasian man in his young thirties, was a suicide attempt gone horribly wrong. Or right, depending on your beliefs. He received a traumatic brain injury from trying to kill himself with some sort of gas grill I want to say? I don’t remember. His injury left him rigid in a wheelchair, scarcely able to speak. He told me god had a plan for him, that god saved him from committing suicide. I smiled and nodded sadly.