In the spring of 1999 I was diagnosed with an Arterio-Venous Malformation (AVM) located in the left parietal region of my brain. The numbness in my arms, foggy mental state, and degrading physical coordination turned out to be much more than the flu. You can find vast amounts of published information on AVM research, symptoms, and treatments but you may not find much in what happens inside a patients mind. I was fortunate enough to have chronicled my recovery through many notebooks and sketch pads starting well before I could speak or dress myself. It’s a horrible thing to live through and an AVM survivor could never convey the palpable realism you experience when your mind fractures. When everyone you see tells you there is nothing wrong with the room you are sitting in yet you can see, with your own eyes, the skin melting off of their faces into a bloody puddle on the floor, you panic. You rub your eyes, take a deep breath, and dismiss the notion only to see the horrific sight yet again. Endlessly.

This is the first attempt to collate my notes and put them in chronological order. Most of the sketches were done at the time of the hallucinations and the rest were rendered based on scrawled notes.

I’ll also attempt to provide information that might help the loved ones of a person going through the recovery of a traumatic brain injury. I’m not medically trained but I know I wish this type of resource would have help me feel a little less lost. A little less apt to ask my mother for a gun on Easter Sunday.