Life After Brain Injuries: Are We Still the Same People?

Khushboo see my reply to a gentleman who had a TBI (Tues 4/14/2015)
See if your boyfriend can do that exercise. This will give him some relief.

All the Best

Russ

I am sorry to hear about all that is happening. I can tell you this though. Although my son's situation is different. My son suffered 7 brain surgeries, but by the grace of God he is back to himself but nice. God has worked miracles in his life and what I can say is God is a God of miracles. There have been many people praying. Pray for your dad. Really pray for him and trust God to do miracles in him. Don't see what you see as hopeless because what we see as hopeless is possible through Jesus. You are a good son put it all in God's hands.

Sometimes after brain injury we see things differently than others and feel that our decisions our correct. My son age 21 had a brain injury and he had a v/p shunt placed 3 times. After no one would touch him a local doctor where I work did his surgery and he regained consciousness and started talking. He was in a wheelchair and told me, "mom I want to learn how to drive." I told him, "you were not ready." He went through intense physical therapy and finally one day I had to retrain him to drive again. It took almost a year before his memory would start coming back but he had to ask a lot of questions and work very hard. Ten times more than the average person. He could not retain any information. But now he is going to school full-time. But it all took time. The brain takes a long time to regenerate and it's very complicated. But God gave us a brain where we only use 11% of our brain. I believe that if you keep practicing in reading, math and other areas. You will overcome your expectations. Do not give up in yourself and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. If I told my son you would never walk again, he would still be in a wheelchair. So be positive and place your faith in the one and only true healer. God. May God bless you and allow this experience to help others as it has helped us.

Keep faith n be strong ....all that u wish for will come to pass....have faith

I understand exactly what you are going through. I am experiencing the same thing and it is difficult just to go through the motions without feeling much but that's what I'm doing everyday. One day it will get better...

TBI Brain Injury. Hi I too suffered a brain injury & kind of feel the same about my emotions. Would like to take if you email me

I was in a motorcycle accident two an a half years ago . They put me in a hospital and housing for 14 months . I am still being misunderstood like you many times . I am not a young man , 55 when the bike crashed . Things with people are so different now that I am slowly understanding I think like a child many times . It is very difficult to consider how I can affect friends who do not know any details . I try very hard to be positive a lot but considering so young is a challenge .

I just wanted you to know that you are not alone in this type of thing . There are a very few so that is a great thing for people . BE POSITIVE .. I say that to myself all the time .

Brian

On 10/31/2011, my son (age 22 yr) and I were arguing and while I was driving, he stood up while the car was in motion r and accidentally fell out. I was driving 10mph about ready to stop and when I looked, he was gone. He had fallen out and landed on his head. He was life flighted to UCSD in HIllcrest, San Diego, whereby he suffered an acute right frontoparietal intraparenchymal bleeding extending from the midline into the posterior parietal region. He had a cranioplasty done and he had improved tremendously but after taking him home 12/23/2011, I noticed after 2 weeks that he was confused, leaning to the left side and drooling. I had a follow-up with UCSD on 1/8/2012 and he was than admitted for worsening hydrocephalus. I was told he was only going to need a ventroperitoneal shunt and he would stay 2 days. Well, unfortunately the doctors placed the shunt but did not realize that all his CSF (cerobrospinal fluid) was over draining and thus his ventricles in the brain were shrunk to half the size. Ok, so they said lets place a magnet where they could control the amt of CSF fluid being drained. He actually improved for 1 hr and than declined again. He now had overfilling of CSF. He continued to decline. Week 3 was now the 3rd surgery to place the plate back in. Fortunately, they finally figured out the shunt was kinked at the neck and so that's why he had too much fluid. To make a long story short, my son left the hospital worse than when he came in for a "simple procedure." He was walking with a walker and when he left he was completely bedbound. He had 5 surgeries there and I managed to hear him mumble words, "I, want, home." I took him home and when he arrived he had also a tracheostomy and feeding tube. I am a nurse and I trusted God to help me make the right decisions. Where I live there is only 1 neurosurgeon in the entire valley. We'll call him Dr. C. I had asked multiple doctors and noone would help my son because they didn't want to deal with other doctor's mistakes. He was the only doctor willing to take my son. He was wheelchair bound and was already contracting with his right leg and left arm. He suffered severe left sided weakness. The doctors at UCSD said he was "a complicated case." Well he wasn't. Dr. C placed another V/P shunt and immediately he woke up and started talking. His first words were, "I want to go back to school." He was able to stick his tongue out, and follow verbal commands. He required extensive physical therapy and today, he can walk, talk, and remembers all his past except that night. He is now in school taking full-time classes and is looking for a place to live. His memory has improved 80% and I only hope that if someone else suffered anything similar and had has a loved one that is not improving after a V/P shunt placement than that could be the problem. God is good and don't give up. God answers prayers. The brain takes a long time to recover, and yes it takes lots of time and patience. God has returned my son to me and now our relationship is stronger than it has ever been.

My good friend Grace had the wisdom to give me, a man who has suffered multiple traumatic brain injuries, an album which highlights different areas of my brain. Pictures that illicit memories that were once lost. I left the gift at her place for now but the gift was one of greatest gifts a man with brain injury and PTSD could ever receive. While I could probably recount the details of my autobiography with accuracy equal to or superior to the average man, my life lost a continual meaning of identity due to several different causes. Unfortunately for me. other factors such as severe depression overshadowed these after effects of traumatic brain injury. Friends. Girlfriends, coworkers and aquantinces. define my life and its apparent lack of worthiness or underachiement to areas that are either more consecuences of the injury or areas that contribute but in no way tell the story, or absurd non-truths; weak character, loss of prior faith. sinful life style, childhood special abuse starting at prepuberty, childhood physical abuse, childhood verbal abuse, a family history of mental illness, including familial genetsl, based psychotic disorder evamong first cousins, doctors prescribing dangerous "pills', social anxiety disorder, repressed homosexualty, introverted nature, autistic syndrome, narcolepsy, epilipsy, perverted mind, narcism, malingering, demon possesed, rebel, psychpath, domineering mothet, fiegned stupity, manipulative nature, true stupidity or just a "bad apple". Is it any wonder that I would be reluctant to let people know me when I have heard all these labels? My nightmares and surfacing memories and long hours of research have me convinced that the real culprit for the soul changeing identiy struggle come from frontal lobe injury due to alcohol abuse, psychotic depressive episodes, and a period of two/three days of siexure epileptus and multiple concussions. The symptom that has made my life most painful soil loss and most of all personality/identity loss. SL the album from my right brained friend was the greatest.

Hi there, thanks for sharing your experience. It does help indeed to understand the need for persons with brain injuries. I am an art therapy student and one of my clients suffered a major head injury. Lost all her friends and struggle to accept her life as it is. I will definitely implement your advice on helping her learn new coping mechanisms through art therapy.

Hello Nancy. I am also a tbi survivor. I am 41 years old. At 9 years, I had a tbi. When I was admitted to the hospital, the doctors did an initial surgery to release the pressure. I was in a coma for 30 days. After coming out, I went home before having 2 more surgeries. I am married now, have two beautiful girls and live a "normal" life. But people that haven't been through it will never know. The recurrences of memory loss, the emotional swings. Thank you for sharing your experience.

I was in a tragic car accident at the age of 16. I also changed. please read this article and it will help you understand yourself. Your not alone. Also, go to this site. Its EFT Tapping and it really helps your brain and thoughts heal. Your angry and thats common.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBvVAxoxrFE ( Feeling Angry)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP70Et2d3Lw (You'll Be Okay -(Fear that things are out of your control)

Please read:

Life After Brain Injuries: Are We Still the Same People?
Alyson Dymkowski

During the summer of my junior year, a friend of mine, we will call her "Jen", got into a horrible car accident. Apparently sitting in the middle of the backseat, only strapped in with a lap belt, my friend hit her head on the side window, smashing the window upon impact. After 3 weeks of being in a coma, my friend eventually recovered. Even though she was deemed "physically" healed, my friend was truly never the same. Not only had her demeanor and interests changed, but also it seemed as if she had become a completely different person after her accident. I thought it very sad at the time, because the friends who had been close to her before were no longer close. I did not understand what they meant when they said that she had become a different person. Certainly, I realized that she had changed, but I could not fathom that she was now so different that they could no longer treat her like the old "Jen". I believed that this new "Jen" was still the same person as before-that the inner soul with which they had become friends had never and, indeed, could never change. However, after reading Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, by Antonio R. Damasio, I regret the harsh judgments I made about "Jen's" friends. Dealing with someone who has suffered from a tremendous change in personality is not as easy as one would expect.

Descartes, a famous philosopher, once made the statement, "Cogito ergo sum" (6). Like, Descartes, I previously believed that a separation between the mind and one's body existed. I believed that the mind of an individual was his or her soul and that the brain and body were just the machinery used to share that soul with the outside world. I never thought that an injury to the brain could cause a change in the entire essence of a person. However, Damasio espouses beliefs which are the exact opposite of Descartes. Damasio argues that the brain and mind are two inseparable entities and that thinking is the function of the brain. Aristotle once stated, "If the eye had a soul, it would be seeing". Using this format, a soul is defined as the function of something. If the function of the brain is to think, then it would follow that the soul of a person exists in one's mind, where the capability to think is lodged. If this mind is the consequence of a functioning brain, then it can be said that when a brain suffers an injury, an individual's entire essence is injured as well. This idea of a person's essence, or soul, changing is controversial. I believe this controversy arises because it is too frightening for a person to fathom that his intrinsic being could be permanently changed as a result of an unpreventable action. However, the evidence in favor of the premise that the mind is a function of the brain, or the brain is equal to one's behavior, is astonishing (5).

Brain injury is any injury that results in damage to the brain. For many people who suffer from brain injury, the problems associated with it become a permanent part of their lives. The problems that develop depend upon which part of the brain is injured. People can lose cognitive and motor functions as well as their ability to express thoughts and perceive their surroundings. The most unnerving consequence of a brain injury can be a change in personality. Often after being injured victims, like my friend "Jen", develop an apathy and decreased motivation for life. Emotion can run to both extremes: a forever high, or as in the case of my friend, an absence there of (1). In society there is a difference in the response shown to someone who has suffered a brain injury that changes his or her personality, and someone whose injury has affected any other part of the body, or even other types of injuries to the brain. What accounts for this difference? If an individual loses a limb, he loses the function of that limb as well. It makes sense then that when an individual loses part of his brain, the function of that part goes too. This is in correlation with the statement, brain = behavior. Each part of the brain seems responsible for different behaviors, a fact that is reinforced when examining injuries to different areas of the brain and the varying results that occur. For example, if an individual suffers injury to their amygdala, he becomes calm and almost devoid of emotional ups and downs. People have therefore reasoned that this area of the brain is responsible for exhibiting anger and possessing violent emotions (9). If the function of a specific area of the brain is a defining characteristic of an individual's personality, then it is almost as if a new person develops, in place of the old, when an injury to that area occurs.

In the summer of 1848, a man named Phineas Gage incurred a traumatic injury to the frontal lobe region of his brain after a sudden explosion sent a rod straight through his head. Against many odds, Phineas survived, but afterwards his demeanor changed dramatically. Once a calm, balanced, and levelheaded man, Gage became an overly emotional, unbalanced and quite vulgar man upon recovery. Friends he had had previously, now compared him to an animal and made the perplexing statement, "Gage was no longer Gage" (3). The most frightening thing about this story is that, although Gage was very different, he was not aware of the changes within himself. In class we have explored the nervous system and noted that there is a separate I-function involved, making one aware of the "self". With each class, it becomes more evident that this I-function has less and less control on the rest of the nervous system. Many times the I-function is not aware of things that the nervous system is doing until the person is told what his or her nervous system is doing, (i.e., when the brain makes up an image for the place of vision, the optic nerve, where no sensory receptors are located). So the question I have for people like Gage, who seem to be totally dissimilar people after suffering a brain trauma, is whether or not their I-functions are aware of the change in personality? People suffering from a personality change are unable to will themselves back to their old personality, even after their I-function is made aware. This furthermore, supports that brain equals behavior, because if behavior was independent of the brain, one would be able to change their personality back despite the brain changes. However, can we ever be sure that, because we are not mind readers, that even though their personality changes, they are not thinking in the same manner, as Descartes would argue? And if the individual thinks in an entirely new manner, would that really be enough to consider him or her a totally different person?

The likely reality is that when someone's brain is injured, the function is forever injured as well. There is no separation between mind and brain. Popular opinion of the mind's function is that it is a result of a brain process. Although when the brain loses a function, it is not unlike the reaction incurred in any other part of the body, but the more important query remains. Which characteristics do we use when defining a person's being? If Gage had suffered from a trauma to any other part of his body and survived, his friends would never have said that Gage was no longer the same person. Often when people undergo a personality change, their IQ remains unaffected by the injury. This is because of the various tasks delegated to the brain. The frontal lobe has evolved to be the main organizer. If people, like Gage, damage this region of their brain, their persona changes because this region is imperative for defining one's personality. However, if Gage had suffered from an injury to his temporal region, his personality would seem the same, only his memory would be adversely affected (9). An example of a personality change as a result of frontal lobe damage is a 12 year old boy who was in a car accident. Since the accident, the child has been aggressive and suffers from unpredictable destructive fits. Although his I.Q remains at 128 since the accident he has been expelled 3 times from different schools for his hostile persona, brought about after the damage to his brain (4). What, then, is the most important factor accounting for the way a person becomes defined; what has happened to make the various regions of the brain become so specialized? Has there been a gradual process through evolution that makes the loss of the frontal lobe harder to deal with than the loss of other regions of the brain, or other body parts? Or has the brain always functioned in this manner? When examining the responses to what appears to be injuries that are all serious in nature, it becomes apparent that some injuries are, indeed, more acute than others. Although an injury which is noticeable may on the surface seem more life changing, it cannot be argued that it is the injuries which are held within one's mind that are the most devastating to a person's being. Yes, they are all injuries to the body, but only those touching the brain have the capacity to change the "soul" of a person.

You can email me at if you like to talk:}

my husband is a tottaly diff man, i feel as if were last on his day list, he has 10 projects going in never finishes them, he is always angry, thinking of only himself ,
i love him in want him to get help, for himself and his family . what do i do?

I believe that I really understand you; I know what you say is true and very painful. I'm sorry.