She Slammed My Head into the Wall or He Beat Me with a Tire Iron

I remember my dad driving me somewhere in a car along the Garden State Parkway going north.  A call-in talk show was on the radio.  Women were calling in and talking about the physical abuse they were enduring from their husbands.  One man called in to complain that his wife was physically abusing him.  My dad made fun of that.  "Oh yeah," he said, "She beat me.  She's a tiny little woman and I'm a big man and she beat me."

There was no domestic violence hotlines back then.  When the hotlines first appeared, heterosexual women were first recognized as being victims of domestic violence.  Women whose husbands or boyfriends were the victimizers were given help.  At first, lesbians were not welcome at domestic violence shelters.  The lesbians protested and so that changed quickly.  The idea that a man could suffer domestic violence at the hands of his male or female partner came later on.  

Yes, a man can be physically abused by his partner-- male or female.  I have seen evidence of this more than once.  And yes, a man can be raped.  I knew a man who had been [legal word "allegedly"] raped by a woman.  It was a very traumatic experience for him by his description some twenty years later when I met him.  This is something that is not talked about much even today.  And yeah, my dad in his old age experienced [legal word: "alleged"] physical abuse at the hands of his domestic partner.  I will not offer you proof here in the form of the physical examinations by qualified physicians that do exist nor will I offer you the police report.  Consequently, any references to direct knowledge that I have will remain under the realm of "anecdotal only" by necessity.

After my traumatic brain injury, I had [sigh, and still continue to have] problems with uneven ground and long, narrow spaces.  I fall.  I fall more than I used to fall and I fall more than the average person falls.  Some docs say yeah that is a balance problem even though it is not caused by an inner ear problem.  Others say that isn't a balance problem because I don't have an inner ear problem.  The bottom line is that when I've toppled over once again [and I usually but not always tend to fall to the right when I do fall], I don't rightly give a shit whether a medical professional calls it a genuine balance problem or not.  The external vertigo [the "room" spins to the left 24-7] is a constant but a constant that I am now used to.  My tendency to fall is not something that I am able to compensate for effectively.   It's a pain in the ass to always have to be conscious of this particular liability and to fall despite my best efforts not to.  I've hurt my back twice within the last two months because of falling.  The physical therapist advises that indeed my falling problem has to do with my perceptual difficulties rather than anything that physical therapy can fix.  "That's what the special eye doctor told me too," I said.  That sucks.  I work really hard anytime that I land in physical therapy.  So if P.T. was able to fix this, there would be a different sort of hope than the hope I currently have.  Rather than hope for the falling to stop, I now have prescribed exercises to loosen and stretch my hamstrings as well as some to strengthen the muscles around my spine.  And we will also be doing stuff to help with uneven ground.  The physical therapist also advises [so many years after my brain damage] that my right side continues to show evidence that it is worse than my left side.  A bit discouraging because I do a lot of work to help myself.  Reality nonetheless.  I can complain about it so that beats being dead and unable to complain about it any day in my book.  

My brain damage [or if you wish to refer to it in vanilla and sanitized words, "my traumatic brain injury"] was caused by an automobile accident.  Falls is another biggie.  In no particular order, there's also poisoning, strokes, brain tumors, drowning.  And suffocation, strangulation, shaking, gunshot wounds, beatings around the head and the neck with or without implements such as tire irons.  If someone else does the suffocating, strangling, shaking, shooting of gun, or beating that's abuse.  If someone who is sharing living space with you does it, that's domestic violence.  If they are your partner, that's intimate [partner] domestic violence.  And yeah, you can get brain damage-- or a traumatic brain injury if you wish to sanitize the phrase-- from those things.

Researchers have researched the connection between head injury and domestic violence. They've written papers and stuff.  I found bunches of the papers on the web.  There is even an acronym to help emergency room personnel and others remember to ask about domestic violence and brain injury.  H.E.L.P.S. stands for Hit, Emergency Rooms, Lose Consciousness, Problems, Sicknesses.  A pdf can be found at: http://new.vawnet.org/Assoc_Files_VAWnet/HELPSScreeningTool.pdf along with a more detailed explanation than the one that I am going to give.

Hit:  Did you ever hit your head?  Did someone hit your head?

Emergency Rooms:  Did you ever visit an emergency room or been hospitalized?  For what? 

Lose Consciousness:  Did you ever lose consciousness?  For how long?  Why?  [Caveat: One does not have to lose consciousness in order to have a brain injury].

Problems:  After hitting your head / being hit on the head have you had any problems?

Sicknesses:  After hitting your head / being hit on the head have you had any sicknesses?

Over at: http://new.vawnet.org/Assoc_Files_VAWnet/HELPSScreeningTool.pdf what follows the H.E.L.P.S. chart is a suggested list of questions tailored for women victims of domestic violence in order to screen them [I hope people think to use this for MEN who are also vics of domestic violence, sigh] for signs of head injury.   

My first neurodoc after my life-changing brain event earned the nic the needle-sticking neurologist.  His practice was primarily composed of people like me.  Most of us had been diagnosed as having a traumatic brain injury.  All of us had various pains which required pain management.  The nerve blocks I received from him [six very long needles to precise areas in the back of my skull three times] eliminated the constant HEADACHE that never let up no matter what.  I had fallen the day before going to see him once.  Consequently, I was black and blue.  He noticed.  He asked me if I was okay, if my housemate had done this.  After I replied in the negative, he had one of his female assistants come in and ask me the same thing.  Although I wasn't being abused, I did appreciate that he had thought to ask.  And then thought to send in a sympathetic woman ["Honey, are you okay?  What happened?..."] to ask just in case I would feel more comfortable to disclose the abuse [which I wasn't suffering from] to a woman.

sapphoq healing t.b.i. says: Yeah.  Some people-- women AND men both-- do wind up with brain damage [a.k.a. brain injuries] from domestic violence.  There's lot of info on the web for anyone who wants to read about it.  I recommend this here site: http://www.opdv.state.ny.us/professionals/tbi/index.html as being most comprehensive and easiest for a layperson to understand.