Confessions of a Concussed Cyclist: when your body meets a SUV

February 23, 2020

One of the things that I don’t talk about very often is the amount of pain that comes when your body meets a SUV at 30 MPH.  Our bodies are not meant to take on such force and walk away from it, so of course there are lasting effects.  

When I was first hit, I could NOT stand to be touched.  It truly felt like I was being stabbed with a knife. Most days I am okay with gentle touch, but there are still days when that stabbing sensation is back full force.  

Because I am in constant, physical pain, I am always either clenching my jaw and/or tensing  up my shoulders (I giggle in spin class because the instructors always tell us to relax our upper bodies and I always think “if I only could”!).  I try to get massages to help these muscles relax but I struggle with massage because I struggle with touch. Although my body would greatly benefit from a deep-tissue massage I can only tolerate a soft, gentle massage and I can only handle it for so long.  I’ve ended a massage 35 minutes into it because although the person was being gentle, I could not tolerate being touched another minute. My body feels physically bruised all the time, so when I am touched too much or too hard, it brings me physical pain. Often, even when people think they are being gentle, it is more than I can tolerate. 

About a year after my TBI I was dating this guy and he commented that I didn’t respond if he kissed my left cheek or the left side of my neck, but if he kissed me on my right side then I’d giggle and blush.  I hadn’t thought much about it until he called my attention to it, but truth be told, I honestly couldn’t feel him kissing my left side. Obviously I knew he was, but on my end, there was no sensation, no feeling.  I started paying closer attention to this and realized if I was being hugged, I could feel hands on my right side of my back, but not the left. Thankfully this odd sensation has gotten better over time.

When you get hit at 30 MPH, your nerve endings are shredded and mine have never returned to normal; they misfire all day long.  One example of my nerve endings causing havoc is that I struggle in bed having two different fabrics touching me (i.e. the fabric of the sheets versus the pillowcases); it creates this awful sensation that makes my skin crawl.  My bed is filled with 5 pillows (don’t all single people have 5 pillows?) but I can only tolerate them touching me in certain places. I can tolerate my head on them (most days), I can tolerate my right side touching them, but I hate my left leg touching anything other than my sheets.  I will awaken from a dead sleep, if my left leg brushes the pillowcase on my body pillow. It is an awful sensation and the only remedy is to then push all pillows far away, my nerve endings are on fire and I become too sensitive to touch any of them. 

So many people that generalize this life with a brain injury think I JUST have a headache, or I JUST have memory problems.  There is so much more that goes on, on a daily basis. Yes, I have a daily migraine, but that is not the only pain I experience in a day.  Yes, I have memory problems, but I also have a list of other cognitive issues. People forget that this all started by being hit by a large car, and although I walked away I did not walk away without permanent damage to my whole body.