Traumatic Brain Injury
I always said I'd remarry if I fell and bumped my head HARD. Does that count? Just kidding. Good luck with ur research.
"When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept for there were no more worlds to conquer." Plutach. Not true, for there are always more worlds to conquer.
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Hi,
when I was attending school in Oklahoma, I was hired by a home health company named Gentiva health services. I was a home health aid and had a young as a client who suffered a traumatic brain injury due to an automobile accident. I am not sure of his level of injury, but great improvement was expected.
I had the opportunity to see photos, hear stories, and watch videos of him before his injury.
After the injury he had to learn EVERYTHING all over again. He could talk, but his knowledge was limited, yet there were times when his memory would kick in and he would exhibit his old personality and thrive for the day.
Before the accident he was a non-smoker and detested cigarettes according to his mother. After the accident he suddenly became a chain smoker. His mother explained that certain parts of the brain control certain functions and that part had been the most affected.
He also had no concept of inappropriateness. He would at times verbalize that he wanted sex and go into great detail of how he wanted it, I heard him say this to his mother, sister, and aunt. He would be reminded that what he was saying was inappropriate.
One day he looked at me and asked..."What is wrong with me? What type of injury did I sustain?"
That let me know that he was aware that something had drastically changed, yet he was trying to figure it all out. To me it seemed as if he felt that he were stuck in a bad dream.
His mother told me that he was expected to improve to about 70% of his former self, but it would take years for the recovery process because the brain heals slowly. His injury was 7 months old when I began to work with him.
I used to stay in contact with his mother until I lost aol messenger. I last chatted with her in 2004 and the young man was at about 50%, walking, talking well, and being totally independent around their home. She was very hopeful that he would eventually be able to live on his own again.
Hope this helps.
when I was attending school in Oklahoma, I was hired by a home health company named Gentiva health services. I was a home health aid and had a young as a client who suffered a traumatic brain injury due to an automobile accident. I am not sure of his level of injury, but great improvement was expected.
I had the opportunity to see photos, hear stories, and watch videos of him before his injury.
After the injury he had to learn EVERYTHING all over again. He could talk, but his knowledge was limited, yet there were times when his memory would kick in and he would exhibit his old personality and thrive for the day.
Before the accident he was a non-smoker and detested cigarettes according to his mother. After the accident he suddenly became a chain smoker. His mother explained that certain parts of the brain control certain functions and that part had been the most affected.
He also had no concept of inappropriateness. He would at times verbalize that he wanted sex and go into great detail of how he wanted it, I heard him say this to his mother, sister, and aunt. He would be reminded that what he was saying was inappropriate.
One day he looked at me and asked..."What is wrong with me? What type of injury did I sustain?"
That let me know that he was aware that something had drastically changed, yet he was trying to figure it all out. To me it seemed as if he felt that he were stuck in a bad dream.
His mother told me that he was expected to improve to about 70% of his former self, but it would take years for the recovery process because the brain heals slowly. His injury was 7 months old when I began to work with him.
I used to stay in contact with his mother until I lost aol messenger. I last chatted with her in 2004 and the young man was at about 50%, walking, talking well, and being totally independent around their home. She was very hopeful that he would eventually be able to live on his own again.
Hope this helps.
You really can't give a laundry list on this topic. Every person is different and sustains the injury in different ways and is affected differently. I do neuropsychological assessments and I see quite a few people that have sustained these, mostly due to IED blast exposure or other related injuries. But this can happen in a motor vehicle accident even or any type of head injury if there is enough force inflicted.
In many people it will start to show itself with fatigue, headaches, visual disturbances, memory loss, poor attention pan, and inability to concentrate, trouble sleeping, dizziness/off-balance, depression, and sometimes even seizures. Sometimes the senses can be affected, such as loss of smell, suddenly becoming sensitive to light, moments of confusion, becoming lost even when in familiar territory, and a noticeable slowness of thought as compared to before when the trauma occurred. Many that have suspected TBI I think just start to feel that something just isn't 'right', suddenly they are forgetting to do routine tasks, like paying bills on time or remember appointments.
In the cases of a more severe TBI, you will marked personality changes, suddenly more anger, aggression, but also confusion, irritability and noticeable changes in terms of short term memory, how easily they become distracted, language functions, and what is referred to as executive functioning. For example, one test I have to give is that I show people drawing and ask them to name what they see. Often they will know what they are looking at, but just cannot come up with the label; or giving them a letter of the alphabet and asking them name words that begin with a specific letter...these type of tasks they often have issues with, as it is directed towards specific criteria. Executive function in a sense has to do with processing, often we assess this by giving them a task where they have to make 'mental leaps' such as finding a pattern. You may also see issues with hearing, such as ringing in the ears, partial vision loss, slurred speech, and some forms of psychomotor retardation, such as fine motor skills, like trying to things with the hands, or a change in how they walk and how steady they are. You could weight loss or gain with an affect on appetite.
There is really so much to it, but these are just a few things. It is peculiar...you can see someone with an obvious TBI that more or less has minimal trouble functioning...then you see someone that seems 'normal' but when you focus on ferreting out the symptoms you will amazed at the true level of impairment.
In many people it will start to show itself with fatigue, headaches, visual disturbances, memory loss, poor attention pan, and inability to concentrate, trouble sleeping, dizziness/off-balance, depression, and sometimes even seizures. Sometimes the senses can be affected, such as loss of smell, suddenly becoming sensitive to light, moments of confusion, becoming lost even when in familiar territory, and a noticeable slowness of thought as compared to before when the trauma occurred. Many that have suspected TBI I think just start to feel that something just isn't 'right', suddenly they are forgetting to do routine tasks, like paying bills on time or remember appointments.
In the cases of a more severe TBI, you will marked personality changes, suddenly more anger, aggression, but also confusion, irritability and noticeable changes in terms of short term memory, how easily they become distracted, language functions, and what is referred to as executive functioning. For example, one test I have to give is that I show people drawing and ask them to name what they see. Often they will know what they are looking at, but just cannot come up with the label; or giving them a letter of the alphabet and asking them name words that begin with a specific letter...these type of tasks they often have issues with, as it is directed towards specific criteria. Executive function in a sense has to do with processing, often we assess this by giving them a task where they have to make 'mental leaps' such as finding a pattern. You may also see issues with hearing, such as ringing in the ears, partial vision loss, slurred speech, and some forms of psychomotor retardation, such as fine motor skills, like trying to things with the hands, or a change in how they walk and how steady they are. You could weight loss or gain with an affect on appetite.
There is really so much to it, but these are just a few things. It is peculiar...you can see someone with an obvious TBI that more or less has minimal trouble functioning...then you see someone that seems 'normal' but when you focus on ferreting out the symptoms you will amazed at the true level of impairment.
Thank you so much this was extremely helpful and helped to give me some insight on the disease. I have a friend who had a motor cycle accident when he was 22 and he is now 38 and he was diagnosed with TBI and I see some of the symptoms in him (slow processing, fatigue, memory loss). He can be getting ready to say something and just completely forget. Eventhough its been 16 years it still affects him and I guess this is something that he will deal with for the rest of his life.