Long-Term Effects of Brain Injuries

Re “Waking Up to a Dream,” Oct. 19:

I am a survivor of a severe traumatic brain injury and a series of strokes. My injury occurred on Dec. 27, 1994. Now, almost three years later, I still wake to a conscious nightmare.

I think the media do an extreme injustice to the survivors of brain injuries and their families when they publish such pap about the so-called miraculous recoveries made by brain injury victims. An awake brain-injured person is still a brain-injured person.

It was a sensitive gesture for the students of Newport Harbor High School to crown Amanda Arthur homecoming queen. In a few years, Amanda Arthur’s tragedy will be forgotten. But Amanda will still have a brain injury. She will continue to make improvements over the years, but she will never be able to fully participate in life. She will never be able to experience the full range of emotions and fulfillment we have known.

I wish her the best, of course, and I am not trying to deny her the experience of the awakenings she will experience, but sooner or later, she and her family will have to face the truth.

I wish the media would focus on the misery and pain that is brain injury. The media are seriously deluded about the realities of brain injury. The media’s ignorance of brain injury, combined with the control they have over the dissemination of information, serves as a great disservice to brain injury survivors.

Tell the public how awful brain injury is. I am so tired of people assuming I must be OK because I look OK on the outside.

Please help people like Amanda and me. The injuries we suffered were not our fault, but we will forever bear the burden of the furtive glances people will cast our way.

Help people make room for us in this world.

KAREN MORIARTY

Lake Forest