healing after a severe injury is about reclaiming your abilities and identity
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both siobhan lacey chow (left) and russ davies (right) suffered traumatic brain injuries that changed their lives forever. today, they advocate for others who share similar experiences.
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both russ davies and siobhan lacey-chow have had their lives changed in an instant after experiencing major car accidents.
for russ, it was on his only day off work in three months. he was a type a personality, made his career as an assistant grocery store manager his identity and rarely spent time doing other things. then a deer darted out in front of him when he took his best friend’s daughter and her friend for a ride in his new car, and he swerved to avoid it.
“i hit a telephone pole, and the car rolled down an embankment, and somewhere in all that, my seatbelt broke,” he said. “the car ended up with the driver’s side door in the air, and i was in the back seat passenger area.”
he was taken to a local hospital, where he was assessed for his injuries, and due to the severity, he had to be airlifted to sunnybrook trauma centre in toronto. he was supposed to be transferred to the neuro trauma ward there, but a mix-up along the way led to his discharge from the emergency room, and he was sent home. the next month, he spent time at a local hospital being assessed for his injuries and at home, barely able to walk or move. he had severe physical injuries and a traumatic brain injury.
siobhan, who was travelling across the country for a significant launch with her current organization, stopped at a gym to get her workout in—she was an incredibly active person.
“i had a great workout,” she said. “my drug of choice is going to the gym and working out. so, i was on the highway driving back from that workout, and i got rear-ended. i was stopped, and the person was speeding, and the rest is history.”
neither russ nor siobhan remember much about their respective accidents, but they’ve been living with the consequences ever since.
living with traumatic injuries after an accident
in the initial period following the accident, both russ and siobhan dealt with a plethora of different symptoms that drastically changed their lives. russ lived with dizziness and loss of motor coordination, making it hard to walk outside, in addition to the physical injuries that kept him immobile. he dealt with memory loss, which was only noticed after he would get visits from friends and they’d ask him why he was re-watching a movie he’d just seen the day before.
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severe migraines, changes in his ability to taste and smell and cognitive declines in memory, word finding and speech difficulties became the everyday norm for russ.
“[i had] problems putting together a full sentence, mood swings, anger management problems, concentration and attention were very short, being in a room with more than two or three people at a time was, if i can say this, a living hell,” he said. “you know when people say they’re outside of their body? well that’s how i felt, and then after a certain amount of time i would become very angry, and i would just have to leave because of the overwhelming intake of sensory overload.”
siobhan notes that her experience was like being “brought back to infancy” in an adult body.
“i had to regain cognitive function,” she said. “then also speech function and being able to walk again and all the motor skills, all the things that i didn’t realize i was taking for granted had to be regained.”
she also had a “whole bunch of physical injuries” to contend with as well, losing abilities on her left side and her ability to walk.
rehabilitation is both physical and mental
russ’s experience with rehabilitation started off rocky. he found the trauma clinic he was sent to wasn’t very much help. he felt as though he was being worked on instead of worked with, having everybody else who thought they knew what was best fail to listen to what he actually needed to succeed.
he didn’t want to be coddled or treated as though he couldn’t do certain things. he was still the same “go, go, go” person he always was. it just looked a little different now.
“i needed therapists and professional help that would push us as we did before,” he said. “that might not work for somebody else, like if you’re a very laid-back person, you might not want somebody who pushes you. that may backfire completely for you, but that’s what i needed … a lot of it comes down to your personality.”
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when he finally found a team that worked with him and his personality type, things started to improve. he worked with an occupational therapist, a speech and language pathologist and a physiotherapist.
he was given the homework he wanted to ensure that his physical and cognitive injuries would improve, like exercises and movements that he still does every single day.
“that took about four years before i was finally able to wean myself off of physiotherapy,” he said. “i still do it today, for an hour, every morning from what i’ve learned, and when i do need some touch-ups, i go see him again.”
russ’s brain injury was different. however, he notes that his brain health took a backseat to the physical injuries, and it wasn’t until almost a year and four months after the accident did he finally match with therapists that really started to help him improve his cognitive health.
at the two-year mark, things took an even worse turn because it was thought that the most progress a person would make after an injury like his would be within that time period. after that, it doesn’t get much better. at the time, he still had notes all over his home to remind him to take his medication, to brush his teeth, to lock the door.
“they were everywhere,” he said. “checklists, notes, and i’m like, ‘i can’t live like this.’ so, i became very suicidal.”
no one had thought to offer mental health care as part of a well-rounded approach to injury rehabilitation to russ, and when those thoughts began to become overwhelming and his “depression became extreme”, russ’s doctor advised him to go to an emergency room at a local hospital.
“that was one of the most difficult things that i had to do in my life,” he said. he was placed in a six-week outpatient mental health program by a “wonderful” psychiatrist at the hospital, got involved in group therapy and eventually began cognitive behavioural therapy (cbt).
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“that completely changed my life,” he said. cbt changed the way he thought about things, helped him become his best advocate, and transformed his understanding of what his life would look like, allowing him to continue improving physically and cognitively.
diagnosis puts people into ‘boxes’
siobhan’s experience began with similar physical and cognitive therapies, but she notes that “right after an injury, there’s a diagnosis and you’re put into boxes” because that’s how the medical world is trained.
that said, it’s important to remember that a diagnosis, although extremely important, is not who a person is. and medical professionals need to provide patient-centred care that reflects that.
“it explains the part of your experience of what you’re going through in that moment based on what took place. i don’t believe it defines your identity,” she said.
“when you turn up in that human element and you meet the person where they’re at versus the symptoms and the modalities and the treating of that perspective, but just having that compassion, having that extension of grace, and hearing them and seeing them beyond what is written on a piece of paper or put into a box i believe is that cherry on top and the enunciating factor that allows the healing journey to be that much more impactful.”
she recalls during her journey needing help with showering and going to the bathroom, and trying to make light of the “raw naked state” that a medical team sees you in after that type of injury, noting that “there’s a humbleness around that.” being able to joke with her team made things lighter.
“being able to meet them at that [level of human connection], on top of the tasks required to support, is massive,” she said.
like russ, siobhan also had “a rainbow of post-it notes” across her home, some that labelled things because she forgot what they were called, others that were filled with inspiration quotes to help her keep going.
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these types of accidents happen suddenly; treating the person as who they are, not as what just happened, is the only way to help someone on their way to healing. because at the end of the day, no one’s ever really ready to experience a severe injury.
“one day, you’re literally living this life that you’ve always known or felt you got comfortable in … and then the next you’re learning how to navigate a completely different one, almost blindfoldedly,” she said. “so, when i look at rehabilitation, it’s something that we choose because we’re ready in a place where we have-it’s like a ride-or-die kind of concept.”
to siobhan, rehabilitation after her accident was far more than a physical recovery. it was about starting with one small step because giving up wasn’t an option. to her, it was about rebuilding confidence and identity, belief in oneself and independence.
she doesn’t subscribe to linear healing patterns, nor does she feel that bad days on her journey should be called setbacks. some days she feels strong and ready to take on other things; other days she still feels the effects of the accident, like struggling to find her words or managing intense fatigue and cognitive delays.
“i believe that healing asks us to continuously, moment by moment, breath by breath, redefine what that progress and process looks like. so, in a way it’s a grief part. we’re grieving who we were, and that’s also part of the journey.”
during her rehabilitation, she also had to acknowledge the reality of her situation and find silver linings.
“for a long time, believing that rehabilitation meant finding my way back, so i’m going in, i’m going to do all these things and i’m going to find my way back to who i was. but i’m not meant to go back to who i was. that’s the other sliver lining of it all. it’s learning to grow forward and reinvent yourself.”
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she also pays due to mental health support during her rehabilitation, just like russ, because “it supports so much of reframing and rewiring” her mind so that she could feed into the positive energy while acknowledging, honouring and then letting go of the negative.
finding victories in tangible and intangible milestones
healing from a major injury is a process, and anyone who’s experienced it knows that it’s never-ending. some days will be better than others, and sometimes there will be “small wins that are actually extraordinary victories,” notes siobhan.
“sometimes walking into a room and remembering why i walked into the room [is a victory],” she said. “it can be as simple as that, or making it through the grocery store,” which she admits is a big one for her because of how challenging it is to go in and get what she needs without having her symptoms creep in.
it’s also showing up for her daughter and being present as a mother.
“these moments can seem ordinary on the outside, but to me, these are extraordinary,” she said. “the invisible work that no one really sees is often the hardest.”
appointments, tracking and communication with doctors are all things that can be measured throughout a healing journey. the exercises and improvements made are all points of tangible data. but the mental calculation is a whole other level that remains hidden beneath the surface.
“the art of pacing, the incredible levels of fatigue and pain and cognition opportunities, the emotional regulation … the sensory overload and the dance within that sensory overload” are all things that siobhan and others who have experienced severe injuries have to work on every single day.
“some of rehabilitation’s greatest victories happen when no one else can see,” she said.
to keep herself looking forward, siobhan taps into what she calls her “mind, body, heart and soul connection,” which allows her to “work with her brain and body and how it connects to her soul and heart instead of against them.”
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it’s a learning process, and healing can be “humbling in the greatest of times,” but by giving up the fight against what she now dealt with, she allowed to find a way to fully listen to what she needed and do what needed to be done to get to a place where she would be happy. because being angry or fighting against herself wasn’t going to work.
“it’s learning a new way of living,” she said. “learning that fine art of not trying to fix things and just be with them and let them pass through my body and out of my mind and thought capacity.”
russ, who began to experience his greatest gains after the two-year mark, remembers one particular moment when he felt exceptionally proud of the work he had put in to heal from his accident.
“remember how i said i had notes and everything all over the place? we could start taking those down,” he said of the day that he realized he had made significant progress in his rehabilitation. “i was like, ‘okay, i remember my keys when i leave the house. i remember to take my medication. i remember. to me, that was huge … it was my start to my semi-independent life.”
tapping into inner resilience
working with the right medical professionals and receiving care that was highly individualized was important for both siobhan and russ’ journey with rehabilitation after their car accidents. but one thing they both had, throughout, that could only come from within, was their resilience to keep working, keep trying, and never give up, even on days when it seemed impossible to go on.
siobhan called her ability to stay looking forward “reps in the gym of resilience,” where she would build up with compounded small habits over time, these micro moments, that continued to foster healing both in her physical body and her mind.
“when you actually take those habits, and you actually are able to maintain them consistently, you’re going to get the gains,” she says, comparing it to actually muscle building in the gym. “that is the foundation because i am, to a fault, consistent in all that i do … we don’t realize how strong we really are until we get into these moments and these experiences of life that we’re really tested, and that’s where character starts to come in and who you truly are inside.”
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siobhan’s life today is focused on raising her daughter and advocating for others through her impower platform, which fosters connection and community so people can share support and resources.
russ, who went for gold his whole life, never expected to be in the position he is in now, but it taught him a lot about himself and that sometimes, “it’s okay to take time” for himself.
“i learned that i can overcome obstacles that i didn’t think i could. i learned that i can be stronger than i am now,” he said, later continuing, “i have the strength now to say, ‘okay, i just need a day to just take to myself, relax, maybe i’ve done too much’ … which before i would never do. i looked after my parents when they got older and got sick. my mom had alzheimer’s. i raised my niece and nephew … i would take on everything. now i know it’s okay to take time for myself … and i think that’s a strength too, because not everybody can do that.”
today, russ volunteers with the ontario brain injury association (obia), brain injury speaks. his main goal is to continue challenging himself to further his healing and to help others learn to advocate for themselves, whether that means seeking more personalized care or finding mental health help. because at the end of the day, he notes that “you’re not alone,” and there is help for all the things you go through after a serious accident.
“they have support groups. seek them out, because when you find other people that are going through the same thing that you’re going through, it’ll give a little bit more inner strength,” he said.
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