The last thing I saw was a lightning streak like they do on cartoons.

Christina Caspary suffered a blow to the head four years ago. The injury seemed minor at the time, but it had a lasting effect on the lives of Christina, who was treated under worker’s compensation, and her husband, Dennis. She works as a volunteer with head injury patients at Northridge Hospital Medical Center. The Casparys live in West Hills.

I was working at an advertising studio, and we did a lot of children’s books, illustrations and paste-up work. I was working with a stat camera when the door from the camera came loose and fell onto my head. I sort of got squashed.

The last thing I saw was a lightning streak like they do on cartoons. I was taken to a storefront health facility, one of those quick emergency places, rather than a hospital. They took an X-ray and they looked at me, then my husband picked me up and they sent me home. I knew I was hurt, but I didn’t know what was happening to me.

I just couldn’t do anything but sleep. I didn’t know anything else at the very beginning, just very minimal amounts of information, and I couldn’t remember words or how to use words. Not too many people knew it, because I didn’t respond, and they just thought, “Well, she’s tired. she’s not talking.”

I was in bed for a few days after the injury. Then they called and said I had to come back to work. I don’t even remember driving to work. A part of me was so used to going to work that it got me there. I worked for a day or two, and then I just couldn’t do it. I had disconnected ideas, disconnected thoughts. I didn’t know how to process information. They’d give me directions. I’d go to my desk and totally fade out

I felt like my brain was a pea in jelly. Instead of being normal size, it shrunk down. It was so weird.

It was so devastating at work, because I loved my work and my friends. I couldn’t function, and I was telling them there was something wrong with me. They thought I was being silly or being a baby. They had no idea the damage that was done, and I tried to explain the best I could without even knowing what was wrong. I said, “There’s something wrong. I don’t know what it is.”

I used to stay in this house and lock myself away from people. I couldn’t handle speaking to anyone. I used to go into the bathroom and just scream and yell, because I couldn’t handle all the emotional imbalance and the craziness and the pressure that had been created in the brain from being damaged.

I was really an energetic and outgoing person, but I became introverted and afraid of everything, because I was so hurt inside.

I used to repeat things over and over to my husband. I used to drive him nuts. That was the hard part. He didn’t know that I had brain damage. I looked fine. Nothing was broken, nothing was bleeding. Everything was internal.

Two and a half years later I was still walking around like a zombie. I was half gone. I had like a black cloud over my head. You don’t really know what depression means until you’re in a depression from chemical imbalance from the brain. I couldn’t get rid of it.

Eventually I went to Northridge Hospital Medical Center. They have the TGICARE House for high-level head-injured patients, and it’s an outpatient day treatment center. They work on your cognitive skills, physical therapy, speech therapy. I went through the program, and it helped me a lot. I learned I have brain deficits, and they’ve given me skills to rework my brain messages and functions, to take over where the brain cells were injured and damaged. I could finally relate to these people, where I had lost a lot of my friends because I could not keep up with their pace.

So now in turn I work with patients and we produce the Headliners, which is the newsletter written by patients for the TGICARE House. I’m the editor.

Today I know that I didn’t have this little bump on the head, I had serious neck, back and head injury.

The brain is amazing. I can tell you that the brain really likes to be whole and to fight, because I think that’s what got me through. I don’t think I could have made it if I didn’t have that will to fight.