By Kara L. Swanson
I’ll Carry the Fork is an insightful, candid, and often funny account of how Kara Swanson learned to live with a mild brain injury. Swanson quickly hooks the reader with her fast-paced saga of how a bright, athletic, 32-year-old manager of a catering company comes to grips with her newly acquired impairments.
Swanson was at first “seduced by the term ‘mild closed head injury;’" surely it meant a quick return to "normal." But soon she learned the grim reality. She was diagnosed with thirteen higher-learning impairments.
For months, Swanson drifted through life with little focus, energy, or motivation. Her only joy was the evening telecast of the Detroit Red Wings hockey game. Not wanting to reveal her impairments to friends, Swanson isolated herself with only her dogs for company.
In one critical area, though, Swanson had an advantage over most survivors. Prior to her accident, she’d been working with a psychotherapist to address some relationship issues. So, she recognized that she needed help to cope with the fear, anger, grief, anxiety, depression, and plummeting self-esteem that haunted her after her brain injury.
Her therapist allowed Swanson a reasonable period of mourning for the life she had lost. Then Swanson started the difficult work. She began to acknowledge the permanence and severity of her impairments. But, she refused to let them define her. In fact, she started to apply compensatory techniques before she even knew what they were. Can you guess why she carries the fork?
A vocational therapist suggested that Swanson return to work part-time, but perform only simple tasks, like food preparation and filing. Swanson balked. Her psychotherapist believed that Swanson’s lifelong ambition to become a writer was realistic and encouraged her to reach for the stars.
The therapist’s confidence was well placed. Swanson’s colorful writing style laced with sports analogies makes this book a pleasure to read, especially for hockey fans. Some of her stories are too schmaltzy and celebrity-driven for us, but this is a minor complaint.
Jessica notes one troubling area. Some of Swanson's doctors, especially her psychotherapist, were not well acquainted with brain injury. While this worked for Swanson, Jessica strongly recommends that you search far and wide for medical professionals who have significant experience working with brain injury survivors. It’s your only brain; you don’t want to be at the bottom of a doctor’s learning curve.
The back matter of I'll Carry the Fork includes useful contributions from Swanson's psychologist, Virginia Keena, MA, LLP, and Charles N. Simpkins, Esq., an attorney who specializes in brain injury litigation. Both give pointers on locating professionals who are knowledgeable about brain injuries.