TBI survivor beats odds, becomes peer counselor
A Melbourne, FL, rehabilitation hospital has found that one of the greatest services it can offer traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients is a support group led by a peer counselor who has survived TBI.
K. Dorn Williamson, MS, suffered a severe brain injury in 1987 after a head-on collision with a pickup truck operated by a drunk driver. A college student majoring in psychology at the time, Williamson was in a coma for 3½ months. When she regained consciousness, she had lost her right field of vision in both eyes and couldn’t walk. Also, her right arm’s peripheral nerves were damaged, and she had lost all sense of taste and smell.
Returning to college to earn a bachelor’s degree seemed to be an impossible goal when she began inpatient rehabilitation at HealthSouth Sea Pines Rehabilitation Hospital in Melbourne. However, as her ability to walk and use her right arm slowly returned, she began to dream of returning to school.
"When I was in outpatient treatment, I was determined to go back to school, and my psychotherapist said he didn’t think it was a good idea because if I failed I might become depressed," Williamson recalls. "But I did it through hard work and taking one class a semester, whereas before I took a full load with no problems."
She kept up the schoolwork to earn a master’s degree in industrial organizational psychology. After being a patient at HealthSouth Sea Pines for two years, Williamson began to volunteer as an intern, and eventually she created a job for herself as a peer counselor.
Now Williamson works with families of TBI patients to help them understand what it’s like to live with a brain injury, and she continues to lead a brain injury support group, called Heads Together Support Group, which she started at the hospital nine years ago.
"Dorn’s example shows that no matter what your disability is, you can turn it into something positive," says Vernona L. Moseley, BS, MS, rehabilitation liaison at the 80-bed hospital.
Determined to make her life meaningful, Williamson speaks as part of a "Think First" campaign that targets high school students. She tells teens about brain injuries and how they need to protect their heads by driving safely, avoiding alcohol when driving, and staying away from the wrong crowd. She also has raised money for the Brain Injury Association of Florida’s annual survivor’s jamboree, and she has received the National Head Injury Foundation’s Survivor of the Year award.
But most importantly, She says her own experience as a TBI patient has helped her understand some of the key problems that many TBI survivors experience. While TBI survivors who are as motivated and capable as Williamson are not available in every rehabilitation hospital’s community, the peer counselor concept is an important one for a TBI program to embrace. Peer counselors can help patients understand their own limitations, and they can help families understand the difference between being supportive and smothering.
For instance, independence is a major issue and often a source of conflict between the TBI survivor and rehab staff and family members, Williamson says. "You don’t want to treat the TBI patient like the person is an invalid," she says, adding that after her brain injury, her father tended to treat her delicately, as though she was an infant again. "But my mother knew that I wanted to gain back my independence and do things on my own, so she didn’t treat me like a baby."
Williamson also says she sometimes had to convince the rehabilitation staff she could regain her independence more quickly than they thought likely. "I know that when I was an inpatient I wanted to get out of the hospital quickly, and I met the goals for being discharged from inpatient therapy sooner than they expected because I worked hard on it," she says.
TBI patients need to feel independent
Williamson’s family helped her walk the line between being independent and making decisions that were best for her rehabilitation. She recalls one Thanksgiving day when she was permitted to spend the night at home, and she didn’t want to return to the hospital. But her family helped her understand why she had to return by being supportive and saying, "You have to return because you need it, and you’ve got to go for it, and once you have become an outpatient and do those therapies, you’ll realize why it was good for you to stay there as long as you did."
As a peer counselor, she can speak directly to patients’ anguish over why this horrible trauma happened to them. When she awoke from her coma and learned that her car collided with a pickup truck driven by a drunken driver, she often asked "Why me?" and "What am I going to do now?"
But her mother would tell her, "You know it happened, and there’s nothing you can do about it, and you can’t change it, so you have to go on with your life." Those simple words helped her focus on the positives and gain the energy and inspiration she needed to make her new life as meaningful as possible.
Williamson tries to help TBI patients find some purpose in their new lives, something creative or meaningful that helps them reinvent themselves. She remembers one man who suffered a TBI who had been a construction worker before his injury. Afterward, he couldn’t lift heavy objects and work in construction. He discovered that he had an interest and talent in art and became an artist.
"I help TBI survivors find anything they’d like to do, maybe a different talent or a different skill," she says.
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