Thirty years ago, Kerri Walker, now a coordinator for a domestic
violence shelter in Phoenix, found herself inexplicably driving down the
left side of the road into oncoming traffic. “It felt totally normal,”
she said, recalling how she was oblivious to the danger. Walker escaped
an accident that day, but looking back now, it was the first clue she
had an undiagnosed brain injury.
At the time, Walker, 51, was in
the throes of an abusive relationship, she said. She estimated that over
a 2 1/2-year period, she was hit in the head around 15 times -- once
with a gun -- and violently shaken.“I had major headaches, and every now and then I would have these moments when I would get dizzy and disoriented,” Walker said. But she didn't connect her symptoms to the assaults until a year later, when a doctor at Geauga Medical Center in Ohio diagnosed her with traumatic brain injury, or TBI. “When you are in a relationship with that much trauma and violence, you don’t know what’s physical or what’s emotional or mental,” she said.
Soldiers returning from war and athletes are regularly diagnosed with TBI -- a complex brain injury caused by a blow or a jolt to the head -- and many subsequently receive support and services for the condition.
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