After brain injury, a silent struggle to start over

But while Valentini’s family continued to provide support, the funding for her therapy ran out. Valentini signed up for temp work, but never managed to keep a job for more than a few days. Employers didn’t understand when she wouldn’t remember what she’d been working on just a couple of minutes before. It was a low point, Valentini says, adding, “I couldn’t even do jobs that other people used to do for me.”

Things started to turn around in early 2005 when Valentini was offered a chance to enroll in a new intensive program at the Center for Head Injuries at the JFK Johnson Rehabilitation Institute. The program was designed to test therapies for people who had suffered brain injuries years before.

Therapists have been helping Valentini come up with strategies to remember words and to organize her life. They’ve taught her to leave Post-it notes when she gets up from her seat at work so she’ll remember where she left off.

And just this past month things seemed to come full circle as Valentini got her driver’s license back. Doctors at the center figured out the right medication to control the mild seizures that had plagued her since the car accident that had taken away so much.

It was one more step on Valentini’s long road to a new life. She knows the old Kim is gone forever. But, says Valentini, “sometimes I’m not even sure I want her back.”

With a job that absorbed almost every minute of her time, Valentini says the old Kim didn’t have time to appreciate much else in life. “This has been an awakening for me,” she says. “Now I’m seeing things most people don’t have time for. I have the time to stop and smell the roses.”

Linda Carroll is a health and science writer living in New Jersey. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Newsday, Health magazine and SmartMoney.

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