“I’ve often idly wondered why people make some of the smallest decisions: Does it matter which cookie I pick up from the plate or which stall I choose in a public bathroom? Will my choice change the course of my life?
“On November 27, 2003, at 3:30 p.m., I make one of those random choices. I work at my desk until about 2:00 p.m. At around 2:45, I run a brush through my hair and swish a dollop of toothpaste around my mouth. By 3:00, I’m picking up my younger daughter from her elementary school. At 3:15, we’re rushing into her big sister’s high school, unaware that by 4:30 I’ll be signing in at the emergency department of the local hospital….
“The door opens at precisely 3:30. The teacher says goodbye to the previous parents and hello to me. I follow her across the room, where she seats herself on one side of a table and motions to two chairs on the other side.
“I choose the nearest, and that choice changes my life.”
All too often, this is exactly the way a brain injury starts—not specifically with a parent-teacher meeting or a chair, but with a random action at a random time. Contrary to common belief, most concussions—the lay term for mild traumatic brain injury—do not happen to professional athletes or occur in motor vehicle accidents. Most mTBIs happen to random people doing random things at random moments in their lives.
I can’t review my own book, but I can give you a sample of what you’ll learn if you read it:
In Canada, 400,000 people aged twelve and older sustained at least one mTBI in 2019.
While 70–85% of mTBI sufferers recover within days or weeks, at least 15% and as many as 50% have symptoms for months or years.
It is not necessary to lose consciousness or have amnesia to have had an mTBI. In fact, only about 10% of mTBIs include loss of consciousness.
It is not necessary to have taken a hit to the head to have had a concussion. The problem is not what happens externally, but what happens when the brain is bounced around inside the skull, and that can easily happen during any rapid acceleration-deceleration (whiplash-type) event.
Despite facts like these, people who suffer so-called mild traumatic brain injury are often treated dismissively, even by their own physicians.
Facts like these—and many more—gave rise to my book’s title. As concussion experts who are far more learned than I have noted, there’s no such thing as a “mild” traumatic brain injury. I support this contention with research on mTBI that I updated roughly annually and on the challenges of taking such an injury through a personal injury lawsuit, which are even greater now than they were when I was doing so.
No Such Thing is a must-read for anyone who might one day make a random choice in the middle of an unremarkable meeting. Which is to say all of us.
Stephen Kimber
I believe my book is well written and compelling, but rather than taking my word for it, read these words from Stephen Kimber, the award-winning journalist and author who co-founded and formerly directed the Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Nonfiction Writing at University of King’s College in Halifax, from which I graduated in 2015:
“One day in the middle of an ordinary life, Lynne Melcombe went to what should have been an unremarkable meeting and made a random choice. No Such Thing: A True Story of “Mild” Traumatic Brain Injury and My Twenty-Year (so far) Recovery is her account of what followed that random choice—from the gaslighting, indifference, and ignorance of healthcare professionals to the gotcha tactics of shareholder-driven insurance company lawyers. No Such Thing is a painfully personal but powerful memoir of Melcombe’s struggle to heal from a so-called “mild” brain injury, but it is also a well-researched indictment of medical, legal, and political failure. It’s a must-read for anyone who might one day make a random choice in the middle of an unremarkable meeting. Which is to say all of us.”
3 thoughts on “Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: My Book, My Story”
Lynne, I bought your book and literally couldn’t put it down. I read it in one day (with breaks). It combines compelling storytelling, great research into current physical and psychological knowledge, and deep understanding of the human side of illness and pain. The denial and minimization of your accident, from the moment it happened, shows how poorly our society deals with accidents, illness and pain. I found the actions and behaviour of many of the people you encountered shocking. Your honesty and vulnerability in telling us how this affected even the core of your life was refreshing. It stood in stark contrast to the dishonesty and lack of empathy among educators, doctors, and lawyers. Congratulations on persevering through this ordeal and on creating a book that I’m sure will help thousands of readers. — Carolyn Brown
Lynne, I bought your book and literally couldn’t put it down. I read it in one day (with breaks). It combines compelling storytelling, great research into current physical and psychological knowledge, and deep understanding of the human side of illness and pain. The denial and minimization of your accident, from the moment it happened, shows how poorly our society deals with accidents, illness and pain. I found the actions and behaviour of many of the people you encountered shocking. Your honesty and vulnerability in telling us how this affected even the core of your life was refreshing. It stood in stark contrast to the dishonesty and lack of empathy among educators, doctors, and lawyers. Congratulations on persevering through this ordeal and on creating a book that I’m sure will help thousands of readers. — Carolyn Brown
Thank you so much for your kind words, Carolyn. That’s very gratifying. Would you be willing to add that comment to my Amazon and Goodreads pages?
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