Author

My Book

Book cover of 'no such thing' by Lynne Melcombe, detailing a true story of mild traumatic brain injury and recovery.

Excerpts from my book No Such Thing: A True Story of “mild” Traumatic Brain Injury and my 20-Year (so far) Recovery, to be published by Iguana Books in June 2026, which is Brain Injury Awareness Month in Canada.

From Chapter 1
The Accident: A Random Choice

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 pm, I make one of those seemingly random choices. I work at my desk until about 2:00 pm. At around 2:45, I run a brush through my hair and swish a dollop of toothpaste around my mouth. By 3:00 pm, I’m picking up my younger daughter from her elementary school. By 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.

Leaving my two girls with one of my older daughter’s friends in a stairwell—an unofficial hangout and lunchroom in a school with more students than space—I walk down the brightly lit hall, station myself outside the French teacher’s classroom, and watch the minutes tick by on the school clock: 3:20, 3:25. My children are more important than my work, I remind myself. But this is not my usual situation. I’m self-employed, which means among other things that my income can fluctuate. I had very little work for the first six months of the year and am now juggling a surplus of contracts trying to make up for it. I don’t have time to waste waiting around for a parent-teacher meeting to begin.

The door opens at precisely 3:30. The teacher says au revoir to the previous parents and bonjour 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.

From Chapter 3
The Doctor: “Just a Bit of Whiplash”

Eight days after the accident, it’s clear I’m not going to feel better “in a few days,” as the emergency physician and my family doctor suggested. I worked minimal hours in the week following my fall, but I don’t know how long I can keep even that much up.

“I’m doing my best,” I tell my husband, “but I’m in so much pain that I just want to take some time off to get better.”

His brow furrows. “I understand, Lynne. I do. But how can we manage that?”

“I don’t know. I only know that if I’d had a fraction of this pain a few months ago, I would’ve taken two Advil and gone to bed for the rest of the day. I would never have imagined I’d be able to keep going for two or three hours like this for even one day, never mind a week or two. I’m so tired. I feel like such a wimp.”

“You’re not a wimp. I know you’re in pain. I can see it.”

“Well, talking to the doctor made me feel like I was making something out of nothing. I keep going over what happened and trying to figure out if there’s some way I’m responsible for this.”

“How could you have made your chair break?”

“I don’t know. But the emergency doctor didn’t think it was a big deal, the lawyer didn’t think it was a big deal, and my doctor seems to think I’m just looking for an insurance claim.”

“I saw you at the hospital. I’ve known you for over twenty years and I’ve never seen you like that before. You’re the hardest-working person I know. But we can’t make it without your income. I love you so much and if I could take your pain away and take it on myself, I would. But I can’t. The only thing I can do is take everything else off you.”

We agree that I need to focus on doing whatever work I can manage in a few hours a day and then resting. He’ll do everything else. When he and I talk about this a few years later, he’ll say, “You slept for a year.”

From Chapter 8
Discovery: Legal Gaslighting

After the accident, my losses are difficult to prove. In Canada, courts usually award only compensatory damages and put a cap on them; judges rarely award punitive damages, and when they do there’s a cap on them, too. Canadian courts don’t offer the massive settlements seen in the USA; a personal injury lawsuit in Canada is usually limited by the degree to which physical suffering reflects actual or potential financial losses. Ideally, from a legal perspective, the plaintiff can say, “Before my injury, I had a job that paid X. After the injury, I had to take Y time off and lost Z dollars. I’m now working this many fewer hours and earning this much less than I would be, but for the injury.”

I’m self-employed, so I need to show my average annual income for at least four years and then show it dropped after the injury. But I can’t do that. I can show my income grew 450 percent from 1996 to 1999 and another 30 percent by 2002; I can show that, based on the work I had booked until the end of 2003, I would have almost recovered from my setbacks earlier that year; and I can show that I already had a lot of work booked for early 2004. But that’s not enough; I have to show what I could be earning but for the injury.

I’ve always found the biggest factor in being offered new work is accepting work when it’s offered. If I turn down a job with a prospective new client, they’ll be less likely to call me for the next job than the person who did a good job for them last time, when I said “No, thanks.” Even with an existing client, every job I turn down increases the chances that they’ll find someone to take my place. Conversely, every job I accept increases my chances of ongoing work as well as presenting opportunities to meet potential new clients and develop new portfolio pieces and references.

After my injury, that means I have to keep accepting and doing a certain amount of work—enough to cover my business expenses and contribute to the household—even when the work is exacerbating my pain and possibly prolonging my recovery. I have to balance the maximum work I can manage with the minimum income I need. The only way I can show I’m losing work and money is to keep records of the work I’m turning down—work I could do but for the injury. Furthermore, because our personal injury system only recognizes financial losses, it didn’t matter that taking every bit of work I could possibly manage—instead of taking less and allowing myself time to heal—was having a negative impact not only on my overall health and well-being, but on my relationships with my husband and children. Any loss not associated with documented evidence of financial loss simply was not relevant.

And because our personal injury system only recognizes financial losses, it doesn’t matter that taking every bit of work I can cope with, instead of taking less and allowing myself time to heal, is not only having a negative impact on my overall health and well-being, but on my relationships with my husband and children. Anything not associated with documented evidence of financial loss isn’t relevant….

It’s a paradox, a series of paradoxes, and my brain chases them around in circles, day and night. My only respite is sleep, but as soon as I emerge from deep sleep, I wake up, my head buzzing with worry. At one point, my husband asks, “Do you ever get a break from your anxiety, a moment when your brain just rests?”

“No,” I say. “Never.”