For most of us, driving equates with independence and freedom. So when you are diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury and learn that you cannot drive at all, or need to limit your driving to daylight hours, you may feel the loss of independence you once enjoyed.

Even with a mild traumatic brain injury, changes in thinking, perception, vision, and motor skills can affect driving: the ability to stay in the correct lane, react quickly when another driver cuts in front of you, and seeing a green light change to red. With a TBI, individuals become easily fatigued and may have difficulty concentrating for long periods of time. They often have difficulty processing rapidly moving stimuli, such as passing cars and bicycles. http://www.biausa.org/brain-injury-community.htm

But the good news is that between thirty and sixty percent of individuals with a moderate to severe traumatic brain injury eventually return to driving. They do so with the help of driving rehabilitation professionals, who first evaluate cognitive functioning, judgment, and reasoning skills. They then conduct a road evaluation. Still, most TBI survivors are not adequately evaluated before getting behind the wheel again. http://www.biausa.org/brain-injury-community.htm

Family members can help too. If it’s your spouse, though, and you prefer to save your marriage, you may want to be evaluated by an objective party like a rehab professional. For me, though, my husband has been helpful (okay, so we’ve had a few spats). Since my TBI has presented with difficulty processing multiple stimuli and anticipating changes down the road, he has spent time with me driving – me behind the wheel and he the passenger – cueing me when to change lanes or to turn. He has also encouraged me not to engage in too much conversation while driving. Because I fatigue easily, I no longer drive long distances – either my husband drives or I take the bus. And he’s aware of what I call my “bad brain” days and initiates driving. More importantly, I’m aware of my “bad brain” days and either limit my driving, or do not drive at all.

Of course, making the change from limitless driving to limited driving has not been easy. I don’t see friends as much as I used to, and I spend more time indoors, especially during the winter. Thank goodness for social media!

How has your TBI limited your ability to drive? How have you learned to cope with the changes?

Traumatic Brain Injuries 101 In the United States, 52,000 deaths occur each year from a traumatic brain injury (TBI), and 5.3 million people live with disabilities due to a TBI. But a TBI does not necessarily result from a major trauma, like skiing into a tree or plummeting off a roof. You can sustain a TBI from bumping your head on a kitchen cabinet door, or when you and your five year old smack foreheads while wrestling. Penetrating injuries – from a bullet, or other objects that enter the skull – can also cause TBI’s. But the most common causes are from auto accidents and falls.

TBIs range from mild to severe. Mild injuries – concussions – are the most common. Symptoms include confusion, irritability, nausea, fatigue, amnesia around the event, and loss of consciousness up to 30 minutes. But it’s possible to suffer a mild TBI and not lose consciousness. Also, being diagnosed with a mild TBI does not mean the consequences are mild, such as decreased concentration and attention, getting lost and confused, headaches, dizziness, depression, mood swings, sleep disturbances, and difficulty with balance. Many people experience these symptoms for years, which is what happened to me. I still suffer from poor concentration, depression, difficulty multi-tasking, planning and even judging distance. When driving, for instance, I have trouble thinking ahead (at least that’s what my husband tells me). But it’s true. My brain can’t process all the stimuli coming at me: other cars, beeping horns, bicycles, and joggers. It doesn’t have enough room to focus on getting in the left lane soon enough so I can take a left turn.

In moderate TBI’s, the individual loses consciousness from 30 minutes to 24 hours, and in severe TBIs, longer than 24 hours. Symptoms are worse for people diagnosed with moderate to severe TBIs. They tend to exhibit obvious behavioral issues like aggression, and suffer greater physical impairments, like decreased ability to smell (anosmia), ringing in the ears (tinnitus), paralysis, and slurred speech.

But the challenge is in diagnosing TBIs, especially mild ones (like I said earlier, mild from a trauma perspective, not from a consequence perspective. I’ll address the nuances of this in a future post). My TBI was diagnosed in 2006, three years after I sustained the injury. During the immediate hours after the accident, the doctors where concerned with my other injuries – stopping the bleeding from my ruptured spleen and stabilizing my fractured pelvis. So I struggled in the workplace for two years, and at home, blaming my symptoms wholly on PTSD.

http://www.northeastern.edu/nutraumaticbraininjury/consequences-of-tbi/