18 Years as a KBIC Member!

As any reader of the More Than a Speed Bump blog can surely attest, perhaps the biggest blessing in my life has been my active membership at Krempels Brain Injury Center (KBIC). Housed at Portsmouth NH’s beautiful community campus, KBIC began with his desire to help others after David Krempels’ tragic loss, becoming a vibrant community where members  “build new lives after brain injury” within a truly powerful organization! Just when I think that I can’t be surprised by a piece of KBIC’s daily programming, I find myself profoundly moved at some point during the day on campus!

While I don’t have the date that I first made my way to Stepping Stones, KBIC’s name at the time, memorized, I’ve always remembered it to be a couple of years after my brain injury. One of the cool things that is done during the programs morning meeting, having been added to the program just recently, is when Kelly Redwine-DePierre (Sr. Program Coordinator) announces the anniversary of a member’s joining the community. Just yesterday, I was taken on a trip down memory lane when Kelly relayed it’s been 18 years for me. While I’m far from an overtly emotional guy, I could feel tears of pure gratitude forming as I thought of that magical day!

To say that I wasn’t in a good place mentally may just be the understatement of the 21st century. Despite making incredible physical and cognitive gains in therapy, the fatigue of intensive rehabilitation coupled with the developing guilt of my crash being entirely my fault left me in a dark place. As fortunate as I’ve been in all areas of my life, of which my survival and opportunity to make gains in recovery was perhaps the pinnacle, to be in a place making a miraculous recovery surrounded by love and support resulted in crushing cognitive dissonance. From 6 weeks being unresponsive in the ICU, then a fully paralyzed left side with severely impaired cognition and communication skills, to a somewhat functioning adult after 2 years of intensive therapy with a second chance at life, made experiencing intense depression puzzling. I mean, after such phenomenal progress and being graced with amazing support where was my joy and gratitude?

I often describe my experience at KBIC as follows: It’s various therapies where I was given the tools to function, it’s at KBIC where I began to live again! Let me take you back to that first day when “my new life after brain injury” began at KBIC…

After my “graduation” from Portsmouth Regional Hospital’s intensive Neuro-Day rehabilitation outpatient program, my days felt empty. Not filled by work and still limited in many ways, with two 7 hour days being my capacity for employment before exhaustion set in, I can remember my dad suggesting I volunteer somewhere to fill the void left from ceasing my four 6hr weekly days in the Neuro-Day program. I had been told of KBIC (then Stepping Stones) during my days in rehab by other patients who also attended the program so when I googled, “Brain-Injury-Non-Profit” and saw it among the results I decided to see how I could help. My appalling lack of self-awareness had to be comical when I showed up that first day, being driven there and helped inside by my father, yet replying to the staff member who greeted me in the lobby that, “I don’t need any help, I just want to volunteer!”

I’ve since observed and learned that lack of awareness of a survivors’ own deficits is a hallmark of brain injury. Fortunately for me, I was advised “to sit in on the morning meeting and see what I might want to do.” I instantly felt at home in the meeting with a diverse group of survivors all engaging in KBIC’s incredible programming that meets each member wherever they are in their recovery journeys! Walking out from that first meeting and being asked what I thought I might want to do all I could say was, “I don’t really want to do anything; I think I just want to out hang.”

Fortunately for me, I was welcomed with open arms; and what do you know, after 18 years, I’m still hanging out! I shudder to think what my life would look like without my involvement with KBIC, and thankfully, I don’t have to. All In know is that the community of members, staff, and interns have been my foundation for a “New Life After Brain Injury”.