Raising Awareness of Traumatic Brain Injury

By Joel Newman & Emily Walker

Following his own traumatic experience, Brooke Trotter dedicates his time to raising awareness of his injuries and making the roads a safer place to be.

Brooke was a student in 2007, studying at a university in Manchester. Whilst he was walking home from a night out after seeing a band in Deansgate Locks, a car came racing down the 30 miles per hour road where he was crossing, driving at nearly double the speed limit. Having seen Brooke crossing the road, the car skidded to a stop onto the pavement colliding with Brooke. Due to the speed of the car, Brooke incurred a lot of injuries. He landed on the bonnet and his head collided with the windshield. This resulted in a fractured skull, a broken cheekbone, nose and jaw. Brooke was taken by ambulance to Manchester Royal Infirmary, where due to the severity of his injuries he had to have a drainage procedure to his brain because it was swelling so excessively as a result of his head colliding with the windshield.

The incident was also traumatic for Brooke’s parents. His mum was living in the North East making her 3 hours away at the time and his dad was working out of the country making him difficult to contact. The police alerted Brooke’s mum of the incident by visiting the family home in the early hours of the morning, she was able to speak with a nurse over the telephone who advised she were to come to Manchester as soon as possible as given the severity of the injuries a recovery could not be guaranteed. Soon after, Brooke’s father received a call from his daughter telling him of what happened. He returned to England on the earliest possible flight, nervous to turn his phone off for the flight, not knowing what would have happened when he turned it back on. hospital, Brooke was still in a coma, the doctors that were looking after him informed the family that there was only a 30% chance that Brooke would ever wake up from the coma. The coma lasted 16 days and on the 16th day, Brooke’s eyes finally opened. Opening his eyes was just the start, a common misconception is that at this point all is well however, it was another two weeks before Brooke said his first words. He spoke first to one of the nurses on the ward asking her for half a pint of beer, a moment that enthused Brooke’s family that recovery was in sight.

After awaking in the hospital, Brooke was moved between a few wards before he started to regain memories. He once awoke thinking he was in a hospital in his home town, it wasn’t until he left the building that he realised he was not. He remained in different hospitals for the six months that followed, before being allowed to return to his home in the North East where his parents cared for him for a further six months.

 Brooke informed us that as a general rule for head injuries, you don’t know how bad you are until you look back so you can see how far you’ve come. Initially he described waking up as being like having a filing cabinet tip over and the recovery is like having to put all those files away in the right order, you can get close but it’s never going to be exactly the same. Brooke has worked hard to recover for the last 14 years but there he explains there are still some difficulties that he faces such as his brain been able to fuse the images from each eye so he may see double especially when reading and also being tired more frequently than before.

On the road to recovery Brooke found social media could be very detrimental. He saw snapshots of other people his age and felt behind. He wanted to catch up and moved back to Manchester as soon as was possible. It was while he was back there that Brooke read an article; the top three things that scare people, these being; death, spiders and public speaking. This encouraged him to push himself, and try and face something that others were scared of, to make sure he was ahead in at least one area, which is how he started to do public speaking.

Public speaking allowed Brooke to raise awareness of what had happened to him. He started doing what he and his family referred to as ‘gigs’ in the local schools. This is where he began to grow confidence and set the foundations for the large audiences and conferences he would address in the future. Fourteen years on from the incident, Brooke now speaks to large crowds on behalf of charities and alongside the emergency services telling his story at sixth forms and colleges. Further to this, once returning to Manchester Brooke started to be a speaker for Safe Drive and Stay Alive, a cause focusing on the importance of road safety which explore unique aspects of road safety such as passenger responsibility and the potential reform ideas in regards to the consequences of taking risks on the road.

Given what had happened to Brooke and considering how it affected him and his family, it was of great importance that road safety was an area where there was greater awareness and understanding and through all the work that Brooke did, significantly more of the population became aware of the implications of driving irresponsibly.

In addition to the work spreading awareness of road traffic incidents, Brooke also helps law students to understand the process of cases regarding road traffic accidents and demonstrating the human element behind the cases that before may not have been fully contemplated.

For more about Brooke and to follow his story, follow his blog at: www.braininjurybrooke.co.uk

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