TBI and coma survivor

06/26/2026

My Mom Was Put Under, But I Woke Up on My Own: The Real Difference Between a Coma and an Induced Coma

Let me start by saying this: I am not a doctor, a psychiatrist, or a therapist. I'm just a person who went through something terrifying and spent a lot of time afterward trying to understand what actually happened to my body and my mom's.

If you've ever watched a medical drama, you've heard the words "coma" and "induced coma" thrown around like they mean the same thing. They don't. And trust me, the difference isn't just medical jargon—it's a completely different experience for the patient and the family.

Here is my story, and the cold, hard facts I learned along the way.

My Story: The Unplanned Coma

I had a traumatic brain injury (TBI). I lost consciousness. I don't remember the crash, the ambulance, or the first few days in the ICU.

Here's the wild part: I was just... laying there. The medical team actually thought I was paralyzed. They couldn't get me to move or respond. So they waited. And waited.

Why didn't they do a CT scan sooner? Because you have to be awake to take a CT scan. If you move even a little bit during the scan, the images blur, and they can't see the bleeding or swelling in my brain.

And here is the kicker: They just don't want you waking up in a CT scan and not knowing where you are. Imagine coming to inside that giant, claustrophobic doughnut machine, completely disoriented, scared out of your mind, and having no idea why you can't move or what's happening to you. That is a recipe for panic and flailing—which ruins the images. So they don't take that risk. They literally had to wait until I naturally woke up on my own, fully conscious and calm enough to hold still, before they wheeled me into that machine.

I woke up naturally, with no machines breathing for me. But that is not what happened to my mom.

My Mom's Story: The Induced Coma (The "Manual" Sleep)

While I was lying there unconscious, my mom was in a completely different situation in the bed next to me. She was in an induced coma.

Here is the simplest way I can explain it: An induced coma is a medical procedure. A natural coma is a symptom of injury.

Here is what was actually happening to her:

· The Breathing Tube (ET Tube): They put a tube down her throat that was hooked up to a ventilator. This machine wasn't just "helping" her breathe; it was doing her breathing for her manually. It pushed air in and pulled it out on a set rhythm.
· The Drugs: Doctors gave her heavy sedatives and anesthetic drugs to essentially "turn off" her brain activity. They lowered her metabolism so her brain didn't need as much oxygen or blood flow.
· The Reason: Usually, they do this to allow the body to heal. If the brain is swelling, they want to give it a rest. By putting her in a drug-induced sleep, they lowered the pressure inside her skull so her brain wouldn't crush itself against her bones.

Key Facts That Blew My Mind

Since I'm not a doctor, I looked at this through the lens of a survivor and a daughter. Here are the facts that helped me understand the difference:

1. Brain Activity: In a natural coma (like mine), the brain is injured and shuts down on its own. In an induced coma (like my mom's), doctors were actively monitoring her brainwaves (with an EEG) to make sure the drugs were keeping her deep enough under.
2. The "Light Switch": The biggest difference is control. An induced coma is a light switch that doctors turn on and off. When they wanted to see how my mom was doing, they stopped the drugs and let her wake up. In a natural coma, my brain had to find the switch on its own—and it might not have.
3. Paralysis vs. Sleep: Here is a weird fact: During an induced coma, they often give you a paralytic drug too. That means even if my mom tried to breathe against the machine or move her finger, she physically could not. (Meanwhile, with me, they just thought I couldn't move because I was paralyzed; turns out, I just wasn't "home" yet).
4. Healing vs. Waiting: An induced coma is a treatment. It is used to protect the brain while the body heals from swelling or seizures. A natural coma is a waiting game; the body is in a state of hibernation, and doctors are waiting to see if the brain can recover its functions on its own.
5. The Scan Risk: With me, they had to wait for me to be fully alert to get a scan. But with my mom in an induced coma, they had total control. If they needed a scan, they could keep her sedated and paralyzed so she stayed perfectly still, or they could turn the drugs down just enough to get the images without the risk of her jerking awake in panic inside that loud machine. They controlled the environment completely.

The Takeaway

Looking back, I was lucky. My body decided when it was time to open my eyes. For my mom, that decision was made by a team of doctors watching monitors and adjusting drugs.

One is nature taking its course (sometimes brutally slow). The other is science stepping in to press "pause" on your entire body so you don't die while the bleeding stops.

If you have a loved one in either situation, my heart goes out to you. It is terrifying to watch. Just remember: If they are on a ventilator with an ET tube and sedatives, they aren't just "asleep"—they are being kept alive manually until their body is strong enough to take over again.

And if they are in a natural coma like I was? Don't give up hope. Sometimes, the brain just needs to find its own way back to the surface.

06/24/2026

My body has been through war. And I won.

I never took medication a day in my life—until I had to. Suddenly, I was swallowing pills every single morning just to function. But no one warned me about the side effect that would break me: rapid weight gain.

Almost every medication I tried packed pounds on me like I was being slowly buried alive. My doctor put me on topiramate to stop the gain. It barely helped. Meanwhile, my body kept betraying me—this time with two fractured vertebrae.

I couldn't run. I couldn't lift. I could barely move without pain.

So I started small. A vibration plate in the morning. Just standing there, letting it shake me awake. Then I added walking—slow, steady, never pushing to exhaustion. I let my AI assistant become my coach. I'd ask: "Diet and injury-safe workout?" and it would build me a routine I could actually do.

I worked my way up to the 75 Hard challenge. Not all at once. Brick by brick.

The scale hit 200 pounds. I cried. I screamed. I wanted to quit.

But I didn't.

Today? My body is toned, strong, and under 140 pounds.

I didn't just lose weight. I lost the shame. I lost the belief that my body was ruined forever. I kept the fight.

If you're starting from rock bottom—medication weight, injury, hopelessness—start where you are. Use what you have. Ask for help, even from an AI.

You are not your side effects. You are not your injuries. You are the person who gets back up.

And I am living proof that you can come back from anything.

06/20/2026

I woke up one day and my memory just… wasn't there anymore.

Everything to this day is still in and out. I have memory problems now. I used to remember everything. I had a photographic memory—I could tell you what happened on any given day, even what someone was wearing.

Then the accident happened.

Now I forget random things. Like the Boston Tea Party—I can't remember anything I learned about it. I forget what I just read and need to read the page again. And maybe again. I forget where I put my keys, my phone. I'd forget my head if it wasn't attached to my neck. I walk around searching everywhere because I have no clue where I set things down.

I forget appointments and things I need to do, so I need an agenda. I used to think only CEOs used calendars. Now my phone calendar alerts me for everything. I became extremely organized—everything has a place. Otherwise, I lose it or forget I needed to do it.

I get lost too. Landmarks are always foggy to me. I got lost constantly.

So now I have access on demand—$60 for 20 free Uber/Lyft rides a month, plus Medicaid taxi.

It's not easy. But I'm figuring it out. One alert, one note, one ride at a time.

06/18/2026

Why TBI causes psychosis (and my story)

After a severe TBI (like surviving a coma), psychosis can happen even if you never had it before. Why?

· Frontal lobe damage = broken filter for thoughts/reality
· Dopamine storm = brain assigns false meaning to neutral things
· Temporal lobe misfires = micro-seizures causing hallucinations
· Neuroinflammation = progressive scarring over months/years
· Disconnected networks = fear center can't talk to logic center

It's not "crazy." It's hardware damage causing software glitches.

---

Now my personal piece:

After everything—surviving a coma, waking up to a new reality—I had random women contacting my daughter without my permission. Talking to her. My daughter was pistol-whipped. I didn't know what to do.

So I did the only thing I could: I learned everything about my injury.

I had YouTube on, and it played on its own. A video said:

"Someone in heaven wants you to know—he knows the warrior you have become. The path that took you to get there. Soon, everyone will see the warrior you are."

I didn't understand it then. But now? I'm still learning. Still fighting. Still standing.

This injury doesn't define me. But understanding it? That's how I take my power back. 🧠⚔️

06/18/2026

Lithium level can help with your memory.

New research suggests that lithium replacement could be a potential approach to prevent and treat mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease.

06/18/2026

To understand why a physical blow to the head causes psychosis, it helps to think of your brain as a highly complex electrical grid. Psychosis isn't a "mental weakness"—it's a physical hardware failure that messes up your software. Here’s the medical breakdown of why it happens:

1. The "Broken Filter" (Frontal Lobe Damage)
Your frontal lobes act as a CEO, filtering out irrelevant thoughts, sounds, and impulses. When they are bruised or torn, this filter breaks. Suddenly, background noises, random memories, or internal thoughts all feel equally loud and important, causing your brain to misinterpret reality.

2. Chemical Chaos (Dopamine Storm)
Your brain uses dopamine to signal "this is important!" TBI triggers a massive, unbalanced release of dopamine while also destroying the transporters that usually clear it away. This creates a chemical storm where your brain assigns extreme, false meaning to neutral things (e.g., a car horn becomes a secret message).

3. "Ghost" Signals (Temporal Lobe Seizures)
The temporal lobes (near your ears) are highly sensitive to bruising. Damaged neurons here can misfire like faulty spark plugs, causing micro-seizures. These can trigger sudden, vivid hallucinations (smells, voices, or deja vu) without causing full-body convulsions.

4. The Scarring Effect (Neuroinflammation)
After a coma, your immune system attacks damaged brain cells to clean them up. But this inflammation releases toxins (like glutamate) that accidentally kill nearby healthy neurons over months or years. This progressive scarring is why psychosis often appears years later—the damage slowly accumulates until your brain can no longer compensate.

5. Disconnected Networks (White Matter Shearing)
The coma itself is often caused by widespread tearing of the brain's "cables" (white matter). This disconnects the emotional centers (amygdala) from the logic centers (prefrontal cortex). When your fear center screams "DANGER!" but your logic center can't hear it, your brain invents a paranoid story to explain the unexplained terror.

06/18/2026

Getting Section 8 with a traumatic brain injury – here's what I learned.

It's a long, confusing process, but I figured out a few things that actually helped:

🏠 Stay at a local homeless shelter – even if you have a friend's couch to crash on some nights. Every night you spend at the shelter counts as "homeless" status, and that can bump you up on the list.

📅 Every county has its own lottery system. Check with your local county housing authority and ask when their Section 8 lottery opens. It's not always open – there's a specific window of time you have to apply, and if you miss it, you wait another year (or more).

📋 You'll fill out a questionnaire – be honest, thorough, and don't skip anything.

✅ It helps a LOT if you can show you're actively doing at least one of these:

· Attending treatment (counseling, therapy, doctors)
· Working part-time
· Getting disability (SSDI/SSI)

Living at a shelter + being in treatment + having disability income = a much stronger application.

My biggest tip: Don't wait. Find your county's housing authority website today, figure out when the lottery opens, and set reminders. The window closes fast.

You're not alone in this. Keep pushing. 💙

06/18/2026

Getting to appointments with a brain injury can be a nightmare – but there are options.

I struggled with transportation for so long until I found out about these programs. Here's what I learned:

🚕 Medicaid Taxi – They will pick you up at your house, take you to your doctor, wait for your appointment, and bring you back home. Door to door service.

🚗 Access On-Demand – This gives you 60 free Uber/Lyft rides a month, up to $20 each. That's huge when you have multiple appointments or need to run errands.

🚌 Longmont Rides – Only $1 per ride. Super affordable for getting around town.

How to get started:

1️⃣ Check with your Medicaid plan to see if taxi transportation is covered
2️⃣ Ask your case manager or occupational therapist about Access On-Demand enrollment
3️⃣ Contact your local city transit for discounted ride programs

Don't let transportation stop you from getting the care you need. These programs exist for a reason – use them!

Drop a comment or DM me if you have questions. I've used all of these and I'm happy to help. 💙