Clover Archabal

My name is Clover Archabal and this is my first year DLab student at One Stone. I’ve been going into a nursing home with my mom since I was two. I grew up at this nursing home surrounded by people who loved to see me, and who I've known practically my whole life. The wing of the nursing home we always went to was the traumatic brain injury (TBI) unit. It wasn't until recently that I found out that most people don't know what a TBI is, or how these people are different and what they go through. During my first design thinking project, I engaged with a team in deeply investigating this topic, and even I learned things I didn't know about. The research I did during this experience made me realize just how important education about traumatic brain injuries really is. I was able to interview some of the staff at the Good Samaritan Nursing Home. One of the staff members knew how little information about TBIs there is. Good Samaritan is the only nursing home in the northwest of America that is able to do residential rehabilitation. This is where the patients are able to live in their own homes with round-the-clock care. This helps the patients be able to live as close to normal lives as possible. Even though there are still many things they don't get to enjoy. Many patients don't have family that come visit them, and they rarely see new faces. One of my biggest findings during this process was the importance of volunteers in the program. Volunteers give the patient an experience that brings them closer to daily life. When I was making this piece of short creative writing, I wanted to do my best to show symbolism of how they feel. When making this piece, I looked at a lot of TBI survivors stories online to get a better feel of what they go through. We are planted on Earth in our normal life, but traumatic brain injury patients are stuck in a world far away from us. Their old lives stuck on earth, which may seem so close, but in reality, is so far away. We can only imagine what it feels like to be stuck in space, in a mind that is not our own, but they live through that everyday. This experience continues to inspire me to do good in the world. I hope that I can also use this experience to inspire others to help people like TBI patients to spread good in the world.