Bush makes case for brain injury support

The public comments portion at the meetings of the Coweta County Commission often center on specifically local issues and concerns. But the comments of 26-year-old Coweta County resident Lindsey Bush at the June 5 meeting felt more like a call to arms for someone determined to make a change in the state and federal system.

As someone who suffered traumatic brain injury (TBI) more than a decade ago and has completed an undergraduate degree, Lindsey called on the commission to support her efforts to have TBI individuals accepted under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Articulate in her comments to the commission, Lindsey explained her situation and her mission.

Lindsey is now 26 years old. At age 15 she was involved in a traffic accident that left her comatose for nine months. She came out of the coma but faced what many people would consider insurmountable odds for any kind of recovery.

The right side of my body was paralyzed, including my vocal cords. My lungs collapsed, my ribs were broken, my pelvis was shattered, and my brain sheared internally along the pons, corpus callosum, medulla and cerebellum regions, Bush said, describing her injuries. I had no hope to live and if I did live, I would need to be put in a home.

But such a fate was not to be hers. Along with her own obvious motivation, Lindsey received a wealth of daily rehabilitation that included, physical, occupational, speech and academic therapies. And the therapy milieu paid off.

I graduated high school on time and with honors, graduated from college with a B.S. in Education with a major in speech language pathology and a minor in nursing.I have lived to tell the tale and have seen how citizens of the United States react to disabilities, Lindsey said.

Perhaps most people coming through what Lindsey did would be satisfied with their accomplishments and on top of the world. As for Lindsey, her attitude is certainly one that is on top of the world but when it comes to her accomplishments she is just getting started. She graduated from the University of West Georgia in 2011 with the intention of continuing her academic studies by earning a masters degree in speech pathology so she could return some of the help she received as a TBI patient. But getting in a masters program is problematic for her, not because it requires an overall 3.0 GPA which she has, but because there are so many people wanting to enter the program with higher GPAs it prevents those with the 3.0 GPAs from being accepted.

I graduated on the dean's list my last year of college, with a 3.45 GPA in my major program. I meet all the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Lindsey said, explaining that current guidelines do not allow TBI to be factored in when universities are considering admissions. You would think I would be easily accepted, but not so. I meet the requirements set out by the universities Ihave applied to. I have been turned down by 14 universities after sharing my personal story and my struggles, explaining why my overall GPA, a 3.08 after eight years of school and over 185 credit hours, was largely due to the fact that I was in a coma at the age of 15 and had to re-learn everything and how to do things like eat, spell, add, subtract and write my name.

Lindsey has spoken, often in person and sometimes on multiple occasions, with the University of Georgia, Georgia State University, University of West Georgia, Valdosta State University, Armstrong State University, University of Tennessee-Knoxville, East Tennessee State University, Appalachian State University and University of Southern Alabama.

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Bush makes case for brain injury support