Last week, I had the interesting experience of a book making me mad. I mean, really mad. The title of this remarkable story is The Ghost in my Brain: How a Concussion Stole My Life and How the New Science of Brain Plasticity Helped Me Get it Back, by Clark Elliott, PhD. It’s the memoir of a highly intelligent professor who was rear-ended in a car accident and developed a severe concussion. He had to live with that concussion for eight years before finding the right people to help him heal.

The first thing in the book that made me upset was that first responders told him he was “messed up” and needed to go to the hospital, yet he refused medical treatment, because he thought he was okay. I have first responders in my family, and they know how to assess what’s going on in an emergency situation. They aren’t in a rush to take anyone and everyone to the hospital, so if one of them says you need medical treatment, please listen to the expert and not the stubborn voice in your own head (I say this as a rather stubborn person myself.).

The next thing that made me upset was that I wasn’t reading anything about what neurologists told him to do, and for many pages, I presumed he still wasn’t taking action to get medical care. I thought this because it took him awhile to mention in the memoir that he eventually did seek medical treatment, but when he did, the doctors had no answers for him. More than one neurologist told him that he was just going to have to live with his symptoms, that nothing could be done.

The trouble is that Professor Elliott’s symptoms were debilitating. He had motor difficulties to the point that it sometimes took him hours to walk a block or two. He couldn’t recall his children’s names without significant effort. The mildest of mental effort exhausted him for days, if not weeks. The man functioned at a basic level only because he was incredibly well-educated before the accident, and his intelligence smoothed over the worst effects of his problems.

Finally, I was mad when, at the end, he found the help he so desperately needed. This time, I was angry because it was a chance encounter at a party that led to referrals to a cognitive restructuring specialist and an optometrist who specializes in neuro-optometric rehabilitation. It made no sense to me that he finally got the help he needed due to luck and not due to support from the medical community. These women and their staff rescued Dr. Elliott. They evaluated him and took him through multiple phases of vision therapy, phases that require him to continue to wear specialized glasses but empowered his brain to compensate for the damaged neurons. Why couldn’t anyone have suggested this to him earlier?

I found it frustrating to realize that it took many years, many dead ends, unending determination, and a little luck to help Dr. Elliott find the right fix for his problem. What uplifted me was that there WAS help for him. Twenty years ago, there would’ve been no solutions.

I share this book with you, even though it’s now almost a decade old, because in the end, it’s a message of hope—on one level, that brain science is advancing quickly, and on another level, that no matter what one’s injury might be, there is the possibility that one is not just stuck with the symptoms and problems forever. It’s also a cautionary tale about both listening to first responders and not listening to fatalistic and negative prognoses without getting multiple opinions.

I encourage you to read this book. I am not sharing details of the author’s vision therapy so that you might just read it for yourself. It has a happy ending, but don’t blame me if you get annoyed when you reach the chain saw story about halfway through!

(As always, I am willing to share my books with clients, and I encourage readers who cannot borrow from me or the library to support their local indie bookseller.)