Traveling Alone

Veronica has a severe traumatic brain injury and is high functioning. But what does that really mean-high functioning?  For Veronica it means being too trusting, confident, even when mistaken. She cannot drive, work, lives at home, and we have guardianship of her. She can take care of herself 100% physically when it comes to self-care and getting ready to go places. She is very diligent about being on time, early even. It’s the getting where she is going that she needs help with. She cannot take a bus because she may get off with someone else, at their stop, if they ask her to. She makes poor decisions. That’s where her father and I come in. I have a moderate TBI and get lost easily, not remembering where I am, where I’m going, or why I am going there. We are quite a pair. As my older daughter says, “You are a lot. Extra.” We are. We talk a lot, many times too loudly. I am so often confused about what conversations are even about. I must ask so many questions to keep up sometimes. My processing and comprehension are lacking at times. Then, to talk about things is another experience altogether as I forget my words and try to remember what I am talking about even as I say it. But I am still capable of taking very good care of Veronica.

We received an invitation to a dear friend’s daughter’s wedding. Veronica and I really wanted to go. Veronica babysat this soon to be bride when she was 6 years old, that is now 25 and has a child of her own. We wanted to see her as an adult, walking down the aisle. We made plans to go from where we live in Colorado to Indiana where they live. The only flight my husband could get for us had a stopover in Texas for 4 hours. The airport in Dallas, TX is huge and confusing. Just thinking about the 4-day trip away from home, traveling there and back and seeing our friends we had not seen for 15 years was making me very anxious. They didn’t know the “us” we are now, having brain injuries. I mean to tell you after making the decision to go I had anxiety for weeks before we left on our trip. And surprisingly to me, while we were there, I woke up with it in the morning and went to bed with it at night. My psychiatrist prescribed a non-drowsy, anti-anxiety med before we left, and I took them steadily throughout our trip. It helped. I had a lot of fun but had this little bit of difficulty the whole time, knowing I was not in my home, doing home things, with home people.  My husband, Greg, couldn’t come on the trip because he could not get off work. He is one of my security blankets. One very private thing I haven’t shared, not even in my book, is I have a wee bit of anxiety because I went through a period of time where I had accidents. I now take bladder control medicine. I don’t even know if I need it anymore because this is not a problem anymore. But I am afraid to go off the medicine because… Is it really not a problem anymore? Or is it not a problem anymore because I am still on bladder control medicine? I won’t go of it to find out because having daytime accidents is bad, but bed wetting is mortifying.

All of that went well. Then I had to keep a very close eye on Veronica presenting appropriate behavior. She did pretty darn well under the circumstances of being in a crowd and loving attention. Greg was terrified for Veronica and me to travel from Colorado to Indiana by airplane without him. He is our ROCK. I had a brain injured friend that was going to travel, and I was adamant that she get help from gate to gate. She was taken by wheelchair, and I knew we didn’t need that, so I didn’t think of getting help for us, but that same friend insisted on it. Thinking of doing that put my husband at ease. So, he called the airline. It took so much pressure off both of us. Could we have made it without help? Maybe, maybe not. As I turns out, we had a 3-hour layover on the way there and a 4-hour layover on the way back. When Greg made our reservations on the computer, one of the questions was, “Do you need assistance?”.

It asked what kind of assistance, he marked, “Help with COGNITIVE ISSUES.” He left our phone number so they could call us back with more information. When they called us back, they asked a few questions.

It was up to me to initiate getting help.

• I carried a note with the initials D. P. N. A. written on it.  It stands for DISABELED PERSON NEEDS ASSISTANCE.
• I showed this note at the luggage check-in desk when we arrived at the airport, and they got us to our first gate.
• Once at the gate, I showed the note at that check-in desk, and they already had our names in the system. When it was time to get on the plane, they called our names and we pre-boarded with others in wheelchairs.
• Before the flight landed, I showed this note to the flight attendant as she walked through picking up trash. Before the plane landed, she notified another attendant that we needed assistance.
• This other attendant was waiting for us as we got off the plane and stayed with us, going with us from one gate to another safely. They even got us from our gate to luggage claim.

I did need to tell a couple attendants what these letters stood for. As soon as I did, they knew exactly what to do. So, if you need to travel alone, as a brain injured person, I highly recommend asking for this help.

We made it there and back and what an adventure!

If you would like to read more about our lives, trials and triumphs, through our first 12 years of recovery, please read my book titled,

A Miracle a Day, One Day at a Time: Hope After Traumatic Brain Injury

https://store.bookbaby.com/book/a-miracle-a-day-one-day-at-a-time

Press the link above and it will take you directly to where my book can be purchased if you are interested.

We really did learn from this trip that even a brain injured person can be accommodated to travel alone if they wish or need to.

Have a beautiful week counting your blessings. It is hard not to find any if you try.