Author: Life is full after brain injury

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By Mary Louise Speer | Wednesday, July 12, 2006 1:18 AM CDT | () comments

Megan Timothy recalls waking up before dawn Feb. 28, the day she began her bicycle trip across the United States. Each push of the pedals carried her farther away from the life she knew in southern California as an author and former actress.

“In the desert, the sun comes up gradually. I looked over the deserted land and I thought, ‘That looks just like my life,’ ” she said Tuesday night.

Timothy, a brain injury survivor, shared with Quad-Citians the story of regaining her ability to communicate during the “Fostering Miracles: Celebrating the Caregiver’s Role in Comfort and Healing” program at Trinity Medical Center-West Campus, Rock Island. The evening also featured a talk about caregiving by Sandie Nichols, director of Trinity’s Pathway Hospice in Bettendorf, and some inspirational music.

Timothy grew up in Rhodesia, a country in southern Africa, and came to the United States at the age of 21. Before the injury, she rafted down the Mississippi River and biked through Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

She suffered a traumatic brain injury in 2003, after becoming a full-time caregiver for her mother and losing her home to a fire. She lived in a county mental institution until friends removed her from the facility and made sure she received therapy.

The most vexing part was trying to recover her abilities to speak, read and write. She could work only about 10 minutes at a time during therapy sessions, she said. Then she was forced to stop and let her brain assimilate the knowledge.

Timothy speaks fluently, but she stops once in awhile and gropes for a word. Her reading abilities are similar to a child’s, she said. She basically wrote her book, “Let Me Die Laughing! Waking from the Nightmare of a Brain Explosion,” in her head before painstakingly transcribing it a letter, a word, at a time, she said.

Friends opposed her decision to bicycle across the country. But “a bike is all I have left. My material possessions have disappeared after the crises I had. My friends were horrified and said, ‘You’re 63. You can’t go biking around the country by yourself.’ I said, ‘Why not? I’m starting a new life,’ ” Timothy replied.

She traveled from Southern California to Washington, D.C., and is now on her way to Seattle and then back to California.

Contact the city desk at (563) 383-2245 or newsroom@qctimes.com.