The author of this book, Claudia L. Osborn is a graduate from the Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine. While working in 1988 at an intercity Detroit, Michigan hospital, she incurred a traumatic brain injury by getting hit by a car while riding a bicycle. At present, she lives in Grosse Point, Michigan and works as an Associate Clinical Professor of Internal Medicine at her alma mater.
After the car accident, Dr Osborn conveys how she was not able to accept the changes that occurred in her life. It is partly due to the fact that she has never thought that she would incur a brain injury herself, which she found to have adverse effects on her memory and reasoning skills, essential for her work as a physician. The accident separated Dr Osborn from the profession she dedicated herself to. Dr Osborn described how the brain injury deprived her ability to remember, think, reason, organise and daydream. Due to the loss of her reasoning skills she was not able to comprehend the reality of the loss of her pre-injury identity. During this time, she experienced resentment over the loss of her functional skills needed to do her work. This sense of anger and resentment delayed her development of a new identity and being able to fully participate in the rehabilitation process.
Based on the crises that Dr Osborn describes, the reader gains insights into the grieving that injured persons can experience following brain injury, the process of rehabilitation, and the steps needed to build a new life and identity. Dr Osborn demonstrates the barriers she encountered in fully being able to participate in rehabilitation and how she went about coping to integrate her pre and post-brain injury life.
From her perspective as a physician, Dr Osborn is able to provide an insider perspective on the disruption of neuronal connections in the brain she encountered; how this affected her cognitive function and issues emerging from cognitive impairment connected with brain injury. She also discusses the role of brain plasticity and how the brain attempts to find new pathways to restore pre-injury functions of the brain.
Dr Osborn describes how she was not able to give up and accept the reality taking place in her life. Resistance to her new post-injury identity did not serve to improve her condition. Instead it aggravated it. Even seven years follow the car accident, Dr Osborn's friend Marsha conveyed that Dr Osborn had not sufficiently benefitted from the rehabilitation process. During this period, Dr Osborn described that she only valued the rehabilitation process if it enabled her to go back to her former activity as a medical doctor. Further, Dr Osborn failed to recognise the effects of her resentment on not being able to develop effective coping skills, at which time she described her life as one of sorrow and being in an overall unstable life condition.
The other disruptive effect of her resentment was related to the problems it created in relation to her caregivers. Dr Osborn describes how her mother and her friend Marsha suffered due to their concerns about Dr Osborn's post-injury functional limitations and difficulties in rehabilitation. Both spent considerable time and effort in trying to further Dr Osborn's recovery and the book conveys their long-standing commitment to Dr Osborn despite her not being able to fully accept their help for many years following the brain injury.
Dr Osborn goes on to describe her experience with New York University's Rusk Institute Brain Injury Rehabilitation Program and the eventual recovery and acceptance of her new post-injury life she was able to achieve. Over My Head provides the reader with a first-hand account of the struggles that persons with brain injuries and their loved ones can experience post-injury. The book also provides hope that recovery and acceptance can eventually occur. I believe this book is an excellent resource for rehabilitation counselling students and professionals to better understand the psychosocial implications of brain injury. The book is well-written, insightful, and unique in that it is written by someone with a comprehensive understanding of the brain, which Dr Osborn conveys in her descriptions and stories. In summary, I highly recommend this book to rehabilitation counselling students, practitioners, educators and anyone interested in gaining an insider perspective on living with brain injury.
