About me

My story of TBI recovery

My name is Anya and I am recovering from a severe TBI caused by a speeding, unlicensed SUV driver. I was hit while walking across a street in Minneapolis, where I live. I created this photo journal to help me process and document my recovery.

The crash happened when I was 23 years old. I spent 16 days on a ventilator, 19 days in surgical ICU, another week in a neuro trauma step-down unit, and more than three weeks in acute rehab. I had multiple fractures of my skull, pelvis, right eye socket, left femur, both tibias and one fibula. I have a severe traumatic brain injury. When I arrived in the ER in the hospital, I had the lowest coma score possible. I also already had an ultra rare cancer — that I had almost died of during college — and am on a targeted treatment for that.

This photo journal is an unvarnished look at my thoughts during the many months of recovery.

I started this project because my therapist asked me to take a photo every day and then journal about it. I started in April 2022, about five months after I was hit, at a time when I was struggling with depression and had little understanding of what my recovery from a traumatic brain injury would look like. At first as I improved it actually made me more depressed because I realized how much the TBI had taken from my life. Now, more than a year and a half after the injury, I'm beginning to realize that I can be alive again. I'm beginning to realize I can live a fulfilling life even with the TBI. And in a way, I'm currently feeling like the TBI has made me slow down enough to have time to actually address my trauma from the cancer, which I had been hiding under making myself insanely busy, including working three jobs at like 90 hours a week.

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Trigger warning: Discussion of depression and suicide