TRAUMA AND DRAMA IN 13-YEAR CAREGIVING OF SEVERELY BRAIN-INJURED SON: A POETRY

Abstract

Abstract

The inspiring movie “The Big Short” posits truth as poetry, although many people do not like poetry. However, poetry sparkles like the opening of a flower, imbued with beauty and mysterious biological and natural phenomena. Reading poetry can promote social bonding and soothing of the mind. Moreover, poetry comes alive with emphasis and rhythm embedded within word inflection, intonation, and rhymes. Hence, elements of poetry, such as creating mental images, diction, form, cadence, rhyme, rhythm, stanza, and verses, are selected and generated carefully and seamlessly embedded here. Quality characteristics, such as imaginative, creative, thought-provoking, figurative language, and experience-empathizing characteristics, are also emphasized. The theme of the poetry presented here encapsulates an evocative auto-ethnography of caregiving for a severely brain-injured son. It portrays the drama and trauma in a 13-year period, commencing with the initial time of infliction of the traumatic brain injury. Over a 10-year period, continuous recordings of events and happenings and of oral and visual events enable snapshots that integrate and synthesize the entire “story.” The poetry contains a number of stanzas (paragraphs), i.e., the emotional and physical tsunami at the beginning; despairing the loss of our second son; imploring divine intervention and salvation; sojourning in the intensive care unit (ICU) in a minimum state of consciousness; the ICU setting and its surrounding; life’s quandaries; reflections on quagmires of the mind; the healing process and rehabilitation; and subsequent long-term trepidation. The underlying auto-ethnographic account is predicated on the critical analytical practice (CAP) methodology of Carolyn Ellis. This poetry is narrated in the present tense, thus evocating immediacy and intimacy. We believe this poetry evokes peoples’ emotions and informs them of the overwhelming demand of caring for a severely brain-injured person, hence sensitizing and uplifting their perception and understanding towards the process and task of caregiving.