I survived a Zombie apocalypse. I used to be such a good little zombie. My car accident happened in 2014 right when my career as a nurse was going full tilt and my husband and I were launching our kids. All of a sudden, I found myself waking up in a seeming apocalyptic landscape I didn’t recognize, slowly trying to rise from the dust. Car accident. Ambulance. Spinal board. CT Scans. Bright Lights. HEADACHE. Confusion. Trauma. Speech. Tears. Traumatic Brain Injury. I hired a lawyer, stumbled to appointments. What happened to me? Where am I? How could I describe it to others? I was the walking dead. But that was the easy part. As my legal case progressed, I was sent to 26 independent medical exams with strangers who procured so much information about me that it felt like complete violation.
“If you think you are fat and ugly then you are. If you think you have a brain injury then you do”. “Why aren’t you working?”. “Tell me what you think versus what others have told you”. “You would do better on some tasks if you weren’t so self- conscious about your limited abilities”. “Tell me everything you would like to forget”. “How do you like sex with your husband the best”. “She has been told she has a concussion which has a strong suggestive impact”. “We will have lots of privacy for this IME right here in my hotel room”.
I Lumbered Through 26 IME’s
I didn’t recognize this landscape. I moaned and stumbled. Arms outstretched. Is this what an apocalypse feels like? I needed help for the symptoms I was trying to understand so I could get through a day. But I was being told by professionals that I had no brain injury, that I was malingering, faking, trying to live a carefree life on disability, cheat the system, exaggerating, entitled to no support and held to account by bizarre criteria. I had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt I had a disability?? My family and I were surveilled. We had people focusing cameras through our windows at all hours (my husband chased them away), and were followed on the street, in cars, to various destinations. Is this what society thinks people with disabilities do? That we can’t be trusted because we are trying to cheat the system? I have no possible worth without gainful employment? It’s an interesting narrative that keeps many people employed, and others controlled. As a good little zombie, I lumbered through these assessments. I was a pawn in a system where insurance companies who are averse to supporting victims will go to any and expensive lengths to evade their responsibility for paying out benefits. The only problem was in my quest for disability benefits, I became infected.
I internalized this process and began to surveil myself. Was I okay to go on a walk and have people still believe I had a disability? Could I go to coffee with a friend and not be cheating the system? Could I go away for a weekend with my husband and still quality for disability benefits? Have a social media account? Do I have to be a prisoner to my couch so as to not worry someone would see me the wrong way? Even for this piece, I was reluctant to give my name. STILL. I realized I wasn’t cut out to be a zombie. As in the movie Raising Arizona, “The institution has nothing left to offer me”, I began to take notes of when I was mistreated and launched professional complaints about some of my assessors. I began to feel the sun on my face as my case progressed. I realized it wasn’t me, but the narrative about those of us with disabilities is an ableist view and is being propelled by assessors who rely on questionable research and large payouts to pay for that next vacation. In some ways, THEY are the zombies, with little feeling and empathy, feeding off these lucrative insurance funded assessments, suspending the “treatment” responsibilities of their profession, and abandoning their duty to patient allegiance.
We Need More Zombies to Emerge from the Dust
Lumbering. Vacant. Unfeeling. Pale. Vacuous. Empty. Greedy. I realized that this deficit- based approach to disability was going to need some continued advocacy in order to change. What we need are many voices, and as with multiples of zombies emerging from the dust, a collective, contextual and culturally responsive approached to disability benefits determination and injury evaluation. But for now, I am in the sun, healthier, living with purpose, and no longer lumbering across a landscape that I don’t recognize. I have without realizing it, survived my own zombie apocalypse, and no one will assess (or try to eat) my brain again without my attention or awareness. I’m no longer a good little zombie.
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This article is also featured in our 2023 Summer Issue of Sharing our Recovery.
The Crash Support Network is a unique one-of-a-kind website consisting of an online support group, a crash survivor blog, a quarterly newsletter, “Sharing Our Recovery” as well as highly informative articles. Our website is based on relationship-building and puts the needs of survivors first by creating a helpful resource for victims and survivors of motor vehicle crashes.
