High Functioning
I’m considered a high functioning ABI! (Have you ever heard of such a thing?) some guys I’ve met over the years say ‘Yeah’ I’m high functioning! Because they can build a computer…
To be clear that does not qualify you as high functioning. I cannot build a computer! But I live independently. I pay my own bills and rent. I go shopping and get groceries and the food lasts a week.
I think part of this is because I’ve not had ‘Trauma’ to my brain. No one has taken a can opener to my brain to rummage around inside there to fix things…
Hell onWheels/Life One Handed 
I have seen what it means to have ABI and not be high functioning.
A man completely dependent on others for care could remember life before the ABI as well as the promise of stellar sports career lost the minute a car impacted a tree. Once a young man in top physical condition, he told me how he had acquired the brain injury and what it had done to his life. It has to be hard to wake up every morning for 60 years knowing the path you were supposed to take in life was derailed because of one bad decision.
A woman abandoned by her parents ended up with her grandmother at a very young age & she wasn’t the first one. Other family members remember the day grandma pushed a girl under the age of 5 off of a high ledge, but no one — not even the sheriff — said a word. After all, the child was “unruly” and that was that. She was taken to the hospital to die, and sent to an institution when she regained consciousness. Not one of her family wanted her in their lives and all she ever wanted was for one of them to send her a card, a letter, or call her. She died in her 70’s, having lived with an intellectual disability caused by ABI.
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We could seriously compile a book of awful stories of what happens to people who have a brain injury. Its inhumane in many ways. And there are different solutions/funding/assistance in every single situation. I fall through the cracks for many of these things. I hope people bother to read our comments because part of my aim is to create awareness. Cheers,H
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I hope so, too.
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I DO read your comments – and I usually hit “like” to let you know — even when the only thing to like about them is that you shared them.
“High functioning” is such a bizarre label. It can mean anything from “doesn’t drool on herself anymore” to being able to live independently to – “how come you receive disability, you seem perfectly okay to me.”
Too bad we can’t give them ALL a month with our “high functioning” brains and then ask them what they think about it — and what they are willing to DO about it!
xx,
mgh
(Madelyn Griffith-Haynie – ADDandSoMuchMORE dot com)
ADD Coach Training Field founder; ADD Coaching co-founder
“It takes a village to educate a world!”
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It’s why I try to advocate for people with less ability to do so themselves.
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