156 Chapter 8
or her job at the computer com pany. Even her memories of Jerry and the children were checkered.
But over the years, some memories gradually returned or were relearned from recollections told
to her. Several years later, the insurance companies of the two trucking firms paid for her mental,
physical, and communication disabilities—an empty attempt to compensate for the memories and
dreams destroyed on that snowy winter day in Flagstaff, Arizona.
Case Study 8-3: Closed Head Injury After an Industrial Accident
Standing straight and alert and using his index fin ger, Ben pulls the constricting shirt collar
away from his windpipe. He looks down the church aisle of seated friends and relatives and sees
Julie, his beautiful bride. At the sight of her, his anxiety slips away; he remembers the reason
for this ceremony. Ben and Julie are beginning their lives together. Death and a traumatic brain
injury nearly prevented this union. Three years ago, Ben had fallen from a ladder when almost-
lethal bolts of electricity shot through his body, causing him to slam to the f loor of the nearly
completed College Plaza Shopping Center. He had narrowly escaped death, but symptoms of his
head trauma lingered.
As a journeyman electrician, Ben understood and respected electricity. The after noon of his
injury was one of routine final checks of the mall’s lighting. When switches and cir cuit breakers
were thrown, the lights burned brightly except those designed to illuminate the way to the men’s
rest room. Ben agreed to investigate, and a coworker offered to cut the power. After spreading the
10- foot metal stepladder, Ben, with electrician tools dangling from his belt, climbed to the highest
perch of the ladder and began to test the wires. The thick industrial wires were difficult to pull
and straighten. As he strug gled with one of them, a bolt of electricity, grounded by the ladder, shot
through him. Ben’s body spasmed and he toppled off the ladder, falling to the f loor. He laid there
bleeding from a surface cut on the left side of his head, with entrance and exit electrical burns on
his hand and leg. At least that’s what people told him. Ben couldn’t remember the fall or even the
day it happened.
As Julie continues to walk down the aisle, Ben thinks about how fortunate he is to be wed this
day. Although he has survived the electrical shock, the fall from the ladder, and the traumatic brain
injury, word- finding prob lems persist. Worst of all, the accident has shaken his confidence. Ben
knows the inescapable real ity: he has suffered irreversible brain damage.
The weeks that followed the accident were a blur. Ben had spotty memories of therapists,
nurses, and doctors. He remembered visits from his parents, friends, and fiancée, but the timing
of their visits was confused. Ben’s first vivid memory of his communication disorder, and the long
rehabilitation road before him, occurred when his therapist brought his electrician’s toolbox to the
therapy suite. She opened it and asked Ben to name the tools. Ben had lived with the red toolbox,
with its pliers, snips, tapes, screwdrivers, vice grips, meters, and wire caps, for nearly a de cade.
However, when he was asked to name them, no words came to mind. But the real anxiety occurred
when he supplied words that were clearly wrong. Ben had a nagging suspicion that they were
incorrect, but no matter how hard he tried, he could not recall the correct ones. During months of
aphasia therapy, Ben gradually relearned the language of his previous vocation.