Saturday, September 24, 2011

The Tragedy of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

Hello World!

Here is where I finally take the time to explain why Damon Feldman seriously can't help being the way he is, and so people should not call him names. Regardless of how he got this way (which he won't talk about at all, according to my research) this is how he is. And it's a way of being that I know all too intimately.

My Uncle Thaddeus McDonald was a renowned Forensic Entomologist, until the year 1967 when he got into an unfortunate scuffle with a police officer and his Baton, during a Peace rally. My dad was there and saw the whole thing and that was part of what inspired him to get his name legally changed from Michael McDonald to Michael McPeace. But that's beside the point, because the point is what happened afterward to my Uncle Thaddeus.

He went to the hospital but the cops denied everything and of course he couldn't prove it even though there were a ton of witnesses on his side. So it got written off as him falling down, and back then people didn't go around suing each other all the time anyway. So he was on his own, with a huge case of Brain Damage, and his career came to a screeching halt.

I wasn't born yet so I never even knew him before the Damage. But I sure do know what he was like afterward, the whole time I was growing up, even though he was old by then but people told me he was like that ever since the Baton Incident. Like what? He was a walking tragedy. He was still smart, but he was VOLATILE and all the time he was thinking about who had fucked him over and ruined his life, and plotting revenge. It never worked out (the revenge) because mostly it was all in his head. But he was angry all the time. He lost so much of his brain power but he was still smart enough to know what he'd lost. And I have learned that with TBI the anger is something you just don't get OVER. It's there to stay.

Damon Feldman had it even worse, because it's not clear if he was smart or not to begin with, but he never had a real education or even a real family & no one ever taught him how to be a proper man (or human.) He had to try & figure it all out on his own. And try having Brain Damage on top of that! He's stuck for life with anger and paranoia and a huge sense of injustice and desires for revenge and feelings of that he's victimized. He can't see that he might be the cause of any of his problems. He never will. It won't help to try & tell him.

He will never be any better-looking or any smarter. There's pretty much no chance that he will ever learn how to read or write properly. And he'll never be any more together than he is now (which is tragic in itself.) And on top of all that, he probably has headaches. The poor guy, it's so sad I'm almost making myself cry by writing this! But not quite. I'm going to go running now and get my mind on other things, like the wonderful beauty of the fact that I don't have any brain damage!!!!!!!!!

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