I lived a fairly normal life. I grew up in Northeastern PA with my dad, mom, sister and brother. I enjoyed spending time with my family. I was a laid back guy who enjoyed golf, fishing, playing pool, camping and spectator sports like car racing. I loved my job. I was working 17-18 hours a day driving trucks.

Driving my big rig is how I got injured. I was driving my truck in white out conditions and I hit the back of another truck. It took the emergency crew two hours to cut me out of my truck. I was air lifted to the hospital and was in the operating room for two days. I was in the hospital for a year and in a coma for nine months. I had to learn everything from the beginning. I had to learn to walk, eat and talk. My personality totally changed. My anger was out of control. I would fight with everybody and it didn’t matter who it was, why or what for. I even broke one nurse’s fingers and another nurse’s wrists and never realized I was doing it.

My brain played tricks on me. For example, once I walked down the driveway to a highway and I was going to walk out in the middle of the highway thinking the traffic would just go right through me and wouldn’t even bother me. The staff that worked with me at the time had to catch me and stop me as I was walking towards the highway. Once the staff sat down and talked with me I realized what I was about to do was wrong but otherwise I wouldn’t have realized it was wrong. Brain injury does not just play tricks on your mind it affects you in many ways. For me, my anger control, my short term memory, my mood stability and judgement were my biggest issues. It took quite a while and hard work to learn how to deal with these issues. It will not take days or weeks to fix issues after brain injury, it could take years to figure out how to live your life satisfactorily and as close to normal as possible.

Rehab and ReMed saved my life. ReMed is a brain injury rehabilitation and supported living system. If I didn’t come to ReMed, I would have been locked away in a mental institution. I have lived at ReMed for 22 years in various residential settings. I’ve even had the chance to get married with the support of ReMed. In fact, this year in October, I will celebrate my 10 year wedding anniversary! I also volunteer at a therapeutic horseback riding program. I walk with and lead horses so that people who have disabilities can have the freedom to ride horses. Living with a brain injury and the issues that come along with the injury is not easy. It is an invisible injury where people cannot see or tell which challenges you face. However, with hard work and patience you can still live a fairly normal life.