Mark John Condon’s life as a child was unremarkable and average in every way. Born in 1958 in Ontonagon, Michigan, he was the middle child of five kids in a middle-class family. He was a no-nonsense kind of guy with a great sense of humor, who loved the outdoors, athletic sports, and his friends. When Mark John suffered a severe traumatic brain injury as a collage student, his world and his family’s world, was turned upside down. Lost in a maze of medical misinformation, insurance policy denials, and offered only inadequate options for rehabilitation—abruptly and gravely compromised by the most complicated disease there is—he found life to be a struggle more difficult than anyone can imagine. Now, forty years later, he has shown an uncanny ability to maintain and achieve goals in the face of the strictest adversity. No one can understand Mark John without knowing the source of his remarkable grit—his close-knit, resilient family. With his family’s love and support, today this independent brain injury survivor embraces life in the moment and looks forward to tomorrow. His approach to problems, a combination of compassion and pragmaticism, has worked again and again not only to his own benefit and but also to the benefit of other survivors. Mark John hopes this book will help reframe any reader’s confusion and concerns regarding post-traumatic life with a brain injury or with a brain injury survivor—in such a way as to help him or her gain insights and lead to breakthrough experiences.
