Traumatic Brain Injury

What is it? What to expect. What to do.

Sitting in your chair right now, pretend you were just in a car accident. Go ahead, don't be shy. If you really did this you first went forward as your car stopped and your body kept moving forward. Then, you went backward as your body suddenly stopped moving and then slammed backward. Think about this happening to your brain inside your head. You might guess what happens is that you would have a lot of damage, not just in one little spot.

A person with a mild traumatic brain injury may lose consciousness or memory at the time of the accident. They may look all right on the outside but have lasting changes in their personality or thinking. Brain injury can also occur due to hypoxia (not enough oxygen) or anoxia (no oxygen). This occurs in drowning, suffocation and sometimes due to problems at birth.

In the hospital, when a brain injury has happened...

"When they are in the hospital, the head-injured person may go through what I call the "confused and agitated phase." They are confused in the sense that they are not sure where they are. ..They generally know who they are, but they may not be too clear who's visiting them. There's also the agitated or restless phase. Sometimes they have to pace up and down the floor of the hospital. If a nurse wants them to do something (such as go to the bathroom), the patients may strike out at the nurse. This is a very tough time for family members. .. For some people with head injury, this "confused and agitated phase" can last minutes. For others, this phase can go on for months. If you have a family member in this phase now, remember this important fact: Nearly 99% of all patients eventually get out of this confused/agitated phase. That's a good statistic. Be careful not to burn yourself out during this phase. The head-injured person will need you more further down the road." (This advice is from a great site called the Traumatic Brain Injury Guide. There are more links to their site below.)

Important information to remember

• Healing from a brain injury takes a long time.
• Often, people recovering from a traumatice brain injury get tired more easily than they did before.
• Family members, teachers and the individual with TBI often have difficulty with the fact that someone who looks the same, walks the same as always is now different. The person may behave differently, think differently, and feel differently even while looking the same on the outside. This is hard to accept.

If you have Internet access, you can click here to go to page that will show you a very short movie of what this looks like inside the brain.

If you click here, you can take a brief test that gives common symptoms of brain injury.

Click here for the complete article on when your family member is in the hospital with a brain injury.

If you are very interested and have the time, this site offers free on-line courses on brain injury, spinal cord injury and "dual diagnosis", that is brain injury and spinal cord injury.

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