Love in the Age of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury

Most traumatic brain injuries result in damage to the brain because the brain ricochets inside the skull during the impact of an accident. Mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI), also called "closed head injury" or "post-concussion syndrome," is a condition where an individual suffers a mild concussion, whiplash or blow to the head, and subsequently develops symptoms such as recurring head pain, cognitive difficulties, emotional and personality changes, hypersensitivity to light or sound, nerve damage, memory difficulties, etc.

Every couple has their "how'd you meet?" story. Ours is particularly useful because it offers both the story and a casual reminder that I actually did get a film made at one point in my illustrious career, convenient two-birding at a time when blowing one's horn just seems crass. This film, from a screenplay I co-wrote (with Patricia Royce) called "To Cross the Rubicon," was being produced in Seattle, and at some point early in the process I went to the company office and met the company attorney, Pete Wilke, Esq. Not long after, Mr. Wilke, Esq. negotiated my contract for the film, we fell in love, and on Oct. 1, 1990 we drove to the courthouse in Mount Vernon, Washington, where Judge Gerald Mullen postponed his lunch to solemnly don a long black robe, and in the company of our two witnesses, court secretary Pam Green and jovial bailiff Harold Johnson, we took our vows. I remember wondering if the whole courthouse/elopement scenario would feel generic and unemotional, but when Judge Mullen said, "The union into which you two are now about to enter is the closest and tenderest into which a human being can come," I was a goner.

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