Books about Living with Traumatic Brain Injury (updated Summer 2019)

Description:

• A Normal Life: A Sister's Odyssey Through Brain Injury - Molly has degrees from Yale and Stanford and was a publishing executive and an extraordinary athlete. But after a horrible accident, she didn’t know the difference between a hairbrush and a hammer. Molly got a severe brain injury from carbon monoxide poisoning. Her husband died as he lay next to her in the hotel bed. Molly had a baseline pulse, but was declared clinically dead. After nine days in a coma, Molly emerged. But not the Molly her family knew. That Molly was gone. This is not a story about recovery. Molly got better, then worse, and then simply different. She is still the oldest of four sisters, but she is a new Molly. This astonishing memoir from the second oldest sister chronicles Molly’s brain injury and its impact on the sisters’ close relationship and on the entire family.

• Falling Away from You: One Family's Journey Through Traumatic Brain Injury - On Thanksgiving Eve 2012, the course of one young man’s life would be forever changed. Falling Away from You tells the story of Taylor Bingaman and his journey through the world of Traumatic Brain Injury. Taylor’s mother, Nicole, shares the story as she recounts the events that happened as the result of a devastating fall down the stairs in their family home. Nicole brings to life what happens in Taylor’s accident through his continual recovery in a very personal and candid way. She expresses the idea that it takes a village to have a successful recovery and it merely begins in the operating room. This book will remind you that each day is a precious and irreplaceable gift. It will show you that love and time do play a part in healing. Falling Away from You is a perspective of hope in the midst of tragedy, triumph in the face of what seemed like unbeatable odds, and how one family came together to help bring back the son and brother they loved so much. It is a realistic perspective on courage, determination and one young man’s struggle and drive to beat the odds, one step at a time.

• From Certain Death to Saving Lives - This is a true story about the "West Virginia Miracle Man" David Barrows. He was an alcoholic/drug user most of his life until he was severely injured by an ATV accident. In fact, he was pronounced dead three time by the time he arrived at the hospital. The doctors were able to revive him after the 5th try and told his family IF he made it through the night he would never walk or talk again, but he proved the doctors wrong. He now is a motivational speaker talking all over the country to schools and organizations about ATV Safety Awareness, alcohol and drug prevention and T.B.I disabilities. Even though he miraculously survived he still suffers from permanent damage from the accident causing him to lose sight in his left eye, total reconstruction on the left side of his face, no feelings in left arm or left leg, plus he suffers from Traumatic Brain Injury (T.B.I.) and lives with severe pain in his back and chest daily.

• He Never Liked Cake - On a balmy Tuesday during the summer before ninth grade, a car accident on a rain-slicked highway flipped Janna’s safe and happy world upside down, and her adolescence dissolved into a summer of restraining belts, feeding tubes, therapy schedules, and chicken salad sandwiches from the hospital cafeteria. Since that day, Janna’s life has been a navigation through the inescapable struggles of her father’s brain injury, a study of her mother’s resilience and unconditional love, an a challenge to find her own identity and acceptance as an adult. Brain injury is insidious. It’s tricky and tiresome. For those asked to love and support a TBI survivor, the struggles are deeply personal and often unresolved, and the victim’s recovery is repeatedly thwarted by insurmountable obstacles, along with the battles fought with insurance companies for proper patient care and effective treatment.

• Lost in My Mind: Recovering From Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) (Reflections of America) - Lost in My Mind is a stunning memoir describing Kelly Bouldin Darmofal's journey from adolescent girl to special education teacher, wife and mother -- despite severe Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Spanning three decades, Kelly's journey is unique in its focus on TBI education in America (or lack thereof). Kelly also abridges her mother's journals to describe forgotten experiences.

• No Stone Unturned: A Father's Memoir of His Son's Encounter with Traumatic Brain Injury - Bart Goldstein was only sixteen when he suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) in a car accident in 2001. No Stone Unturned is the saga of Bart's struggle to regain his life. Told from his father's point of view, the book chronicles the family's ordeal, and flashbacks fill in Bart's life since he arrived from Korea at the age of five months.

• Pieces Missing - A Family's Journey of Recovery from Traumatic Brain Injury - In Pieces Missing: A Family's Journey of Recovery from Traumatic Brain Injury, author Larry Kerpelman tells his wife Joanie's story as it happens. You will watch and feel as she is hospitalized after a freak accident, faces dysfunction and possibly death, undergoes surgery, and, over the course of a year, recovers the pieces missing from her memory, speech, and confidence. This book is more than the story of one person's recovery from a brain injury. It is a story of how a marriage and family persevered and survived the biggest crisis of their lives. Woven into it are discussions of the inadequacies within the health care system that Larry and Joanie faced along with valuable information about traumatic brain injury for anyone dealing with the aftermath of such an injury.

• TBI Hell: A Traumatic Brain Injury Really Sucks - Geo Gosling was born in 1970 in Deer Park, CA which is very near the world famous Napa Valley. He attended the University of California, at Davis and earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Fermentation Science. His first job out of school was in the laboratory of Grgich Hills Cellars in Rutherford, CA. After one harvest there, he became the Cellar Master/Assistant Winemaker at Flora Springs Wine Co. While attending UC Davis he became an avid bicycle rider. He continued riding bicycles after graduating but also started racing them. One fine day after work, Geo went on a bicycle ride. On the way home, just as it was getting dark, Geo tested a law of physics. The law which states that two pieces of matter cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Geo and his bicycle was one piece of matter, the other piece was a pick-up truck. Geo proved, without a doubt that the law is, in fact, a law which cannot be broken. He received a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), plus a lot of broken bones. His bicycle helmet saved his life, there is no doubt. As it was, he was in the hospital for 14 weeks. That's 14 weeks of really bad food. After he was released from the hospital, he wrote a book about all of the trials and tribulations he has to endure as a result of having an injured brain.