Brain Injury

Several months ago at a meeting of the state Supported Living Council, I found myself seated beside the head of a state agency that adminsters programs that provide service funding for people with brain injuries.   Now, because of my twenty years of experience with designing and developing supportive housing, I'm familiar with most programs that provide service funding.  Supportive housing involves linking affordable (usually rental) housing with appropriate supportive services for tenants, and even though I've always been involved in the housing component of supportive housing, you can't have that much experience in the field without acquiring a substantial amount of knowledge about supportive services and the programs that fund them.

But learning is a never-ending process, so when I found myself seated beside this agency head, I took the opportunity to clear up some confusion I've always had about programs that fund services for people with Traumatic Brain Injury (motorcycle accidents for example), and Acquired Brain Injury (stroke for example).

I've known her for many years and she was happy to explain which state programs funded services for which condition.  At the end of the meeting as we were packing up to leave, she said, "Are you going to apply?"
"What?" I said, not understanding what she was asking.
"Are you going to submit an application for funding?"
"For myself?" I said.
"Yes."
"No," I told her, in a laughing, dismissive way.

But I didn't feel like laughing about it.  I'm a member of that council because of my professional position with a state agency involved in developing housing for people with disabilities, and that's the way I think of myself. So, to be treated as someone eligible for service funding was jarring.  I know she was only trying to help, but to be confronted with such a discrepancy between the way I see myself and the way she saw me threw me off balance.  After thinking about what happened, I came to the conclusion that I'm the one who needs to perform some mental adjustment.  I worked as a professional before my stroke, and I work as a professional now, but now I'm a professional with a disability. No use to deny it.  There are many others like me all around the world, and as lifespans continue to get longer, there will be more.  It's one of the many adjustments we all must make as we go through life, and this one is taking some getting used to.