A Drunk Driver Crashed Into Me. When I Woke Up, I Was A Completely Different Person.

  (The Huffington Post) : On a Tuesday morning in 2006 in Dutchess County, New York, a woman ran out of beer. She was drunk at 10 a.m. but not as drunk as she wanted to be, so she stole a truck, procured a case of Bud, then crushed a parked car. I was in the parked car. EMTs pried me out. I woke up in a freezing room where techs were extracting sharp things from my skin. It was a Code 4 emergency, which means my life was threatened. Then it wasn’t my life. The good news was I survived. The bad news was brain damage. Years later, a neurologist said I suffered the same type of injury that former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords suffered when she was shot in the head.  One moment, I was a freelance writer and a single mom — making dinner and deadlines all over the world, perking up headlines while picking up kids. I survived Time magazine, New York magazine, Vogue, plus a handful of haute editors and a “Devil Wears Prada” or two. Then my brain was disconnected. So were my legs and my arms and my feet. Post-truck, I was parked with trauma patients, rolling Play-Doh balls and pounding pegs in boards. We included a former physician, a former professor of psycholinguistics, a former custodian and a former owner of a kebab café.   There’s not much demand for brain-damaged writers. Since I couldn’t comprehend — leave alone manage — business affairs, an attorney completed my last career financial transaction which was refunding a five-figure advance to a client known from Burundi to Beverly Hills. To pay mounting bills, he was forced to sell our home. This was all far above my new head.  Movers I can’t recall ..