Three Nervous Systems, One Tiny House with Meg Payne | Ep. 53

Ep. 53 |

Nine days before Christmas, Meg Payne got a call from the police while she was at work. Her husband Alan had been T-boned by a truck on his bike.

She was 34 weeks pregnant.

What followed was two months in the ICU and rehab, an insurance company that tried to deny his placement, a baby born without her husband in the room, and a newborn brought to Craig Hospital two days later to meet his dad, who was sitting in a wheelchair and doesn't remember the visit at all.

Alan is now what the medical world calls high functioning. He walks, talks, and on a good day you wouldn't know anything happened. He also has bilateral frontal lobe diffuse axonal injuries, significant memory impairment, and an emotional regulation piece that has required Ring alarm systems, hidden car keys, a zen den built in the backyard, and strict boundaries that both Meg and Alan have agreed to honor.

Silas is four and a half now. And Meg is still figuring out who she is inside all of it - the wife, the mom, the physical therapist, the one holding every plate in the air.

This episode is for the TBI wife who is somewhere in the middle of that figuring out too.