Hello, my name is Francesca Burr.
My life changed last year on November 18th, 2016 at the age of 27 years old, when I had a surprising random amount of seizures, while walking down some stairs inside my house, which resulted in my skull being fractured in five places, jaw cracked and my nose had been broken.
Luckily, my mum and step-dad came home from a meal on Friday night to find they couldn't open the front door because I was blocking it and all they could hear was my dog barking and then they saw a lot of blood outside the door.
Once I was taken to the hospital, Doctors had to scrape pieces of shattered bone from my Brain after it crashed onto the floor! I was put into an induced coma for an entire month because of the bleeding in my brain, I was told that: It looked like something out of CSI!
Due to my brain injury, I suffered from severe memory loss because of the accident, but I have vague memories from my time in a coma and recollections of doctors and nurses coming in and out to check on me and asking weird things like 'do you know where you are?' and 'what's your name? Yet after that, it seemed quite obvious to me that I was clearly in a hospital and I had a massive folder with 'Francesca Burr' written next to my bed!
With some of my memorization differences due to the severe memory loss, I couldn't remember my middle name and when they told me it was Chelsea I remember thinking, 'What -- Mum would never let dad do that! Another was that, at one point I also confided in my younger brother, who is also like my best friend, that I'd seen mum kissing a man who wasn't dad, I apparently touched his face and said 'I don't know who this is even though, my parents divorced when I was 10 and she's been married to my stepdad for seven or eight years. He was even the one who found me
Before sustaining this Brain Injury, I was a high-achieving, ambitious person and now I'm a 28-year-old, with no work or social life, living in Halford with my mum! I won't ever be the same because my Brain has had to change and is held together with metal pins, but I am so lucky that I have such incredible friends and family!
During the start of my recovery (in the first months afterwards), I really struggled thinking of the right words for things, even though I've always been academic and confident in that area!
The Doctor’s surprised me with such an amazing opportunity, which was that the Doctor’s got a 3D printer to create a titanium plate to fit in my head! This was so amazing and I first thought of, wow that's some real James Bond shit!
After the 3d printer procedure, I was kept in until around the last week of January when they thought it was manageable, then I came around and they reduced the drugs
I'm normally not an emotional person but it's been hard to acknowledge and accept everything that's happened within the first year,
Despite the hard road ahead of me, I choose to always keep high hopes for the future and be as happy as I can because eventually when I'm stronger I will go back to work! I'm a stubborn cow and I know that, I will teach and tattoo again!
Thank you for letting me join this helpful Family, I look forward to learning more from each of you!
Much love
