An ABI makes platitudes, adages and intentions impotent

Platitudes about how you should live your life abound, but fate will inevitably intrude to make many of those adages irrelevant and the best of intentions equally impotent.

Fate or the randomness of life can disarm any or all of those adages and so change, without notice, the essence and intent of your life.

Preparation and planning amount to nought when fate arrives to dispense an irrevocably life-changing moment - moments that can actually be that or a “moment” that is the product of a life of years lived in confrontation with a dilemma that was eroding an individual’s being.

Interestingly, today is the beginning of a week originated to focus community attention on the outcome of those “moments” - an acquired brain injury.

This is “Acquired Brain Injury Awareness Week” when people are being encouraged to “Bang-on a Beanie” and “give a damn” about those who, for whatever reason, are wrestling with the implications and complications of an acquired brain injury (ABI).
To some the dilemma is known as a traumatic brain injury (TBI), that is an injury caused by an external force to the brain such as a motor vehicle accident, sporting accident, and falls or a blow to the head.

One in 12 Australians, that is 1.6 million, or a billion people worldwide, live with an ABI. That, however, is a conservative estimate as many people with an ABI are either misdiagnosed or go through life undiagnosed.

Sadly it is often the most vulnerable people in our communities who are affected by ABI but never diagnosed, including: indigenous Australians; homeless people; survivors of domestic violence; soldiers who return from war; and people in the criminal justice system.

Those who live with an ABI do so: because the "one punch didn't kill"; have had falls, a motor vehicle accident, or had some other trauma such as concussion or repeated knocks to the head from sport; or suffer a degenerative disease, a brain tumour, Dementia, Parkinson's, Huntington's, Multiple Sclerosis, Cerebral Palsy and other brain illnesses; or suffered a stroke or hypoxia (lack of oxygen); or their “moment” has arrived because of alcohol or drug abuse.

More than 11 000 women are diagnosed in Australia each year with breast cancer, but about twice as many people are diagnosed each year with ABI.

A brain injury, except in extreme cases, can pass unnoticed in the cacophony of life as the difficulty can manifest in ways not as apparent as a limp, but can be as disabling and personally shattering as an earthquake, but to observers be little more than a ripple-free pond.

Brain injuries can be, and are, lonely and alienating so as with any other human relationship all ABI suffers seek is understanding, friendship and warmth.