The medical records say things like "post-concussive syndrome" and "cognitive impairment" and "emotional lability." Those are accurate terms, but they don't come close to capturing what it feels like to live inside a brain that's been damaged.

It feels like waking up every morning and having that one merciful second where you feel fine, and then the headache arrives, the fog settles in, and you remember. It feels like overhead lights at the grocery store becoming instruments of pain. Like reading a paragraph three times and still not retaining it. Like losing words mid-sentence, words you've used your entire life. Like watching yourself become someone you don't recognize, someone who snaps at their kids over nothing, who cries in the car for reasons they can't explain, who cancels plans because the thought of being around people is just overwhelming. Like having to leave notes for yourself to remember things, and then thinking someone is playing tricks on you because you don’t remember you were the one who wrote the notes.

And the part that makes it truly devastating is that sometimes you can see it happening. You're watching yourself change, watching your relationships strain under the weight of it, and you can't stop it, because the very organ that would let you control your emotions is the organ that got hurt.

Every one of those experiences is a compensable damage under Texas law. Pain and suffering, mental anguish (which Texas recognizes as its own distinct category), loss of enjoyment of life, physical impairment. Each one gets its own valuation, its own evidence, its own place in the case.