In the late 1950s and early 1960s unethical people gave LSD to test subjects without their knowledge.These test subjects began to have strange thoughts and hallucinatory visions. Unaware that these thoughts and visions were the result of the drugs they had been testing, some of them became distraught and a few committed suicide, perhaps because they thought they had gone insane.
So it is with brain injury.You will be aware that you have hit your head or suffered some head trauma you may not realise that your brain has been damaged. There can be a wide range of symptoms and you can become very confused as to their cause, especially if the head trauma was only slight. The result of this confusion can do tremendous damage to the well-being of the sufferer. It can lead to broken relationships, thoughts of suicide depression and general unhappiness. A brain injury needs to be dealt with. Recovery can take time and sometimes the recovery will not be complete. The key to keeping your sanity and that of your family and friends is to know that you are suffering from a brain injury.
Three examples of brain injury that were not immediately noticed.
Vera tangled with a lead from a dog that had escaped its owner, she fell and hit her head. Vera was taken to hospital but discharged the same day and has no recollection of the incident Like most people that go home after a minor head injury Vera was unaware that with the external damage there was damage internally. Over the next few months Vera`s life was not the same. She had a problem sleeping. She found her demanding job difficult to cope with. Her husband felt like he was walking on egg shells when talking with her. One day the toast got stuck in the toaster and Vera threw the toaster with such force it smashed a picture on the opposite wall. All behaviour totally out of character for Vera from before the knock on the head.
Julie, My wife, is another example. We were travelling along a quiet country lane with Julie driving our little Peugeot 305 when we met a speeding drunk driver travelling on our side of the road at around 70mph. Julie was making maybe 25mph so the unavoidable impact was severe. In spite of seatbelts Julie`s face went forward just as the steering column came back and up causing very severe damage to her upper and lower jaws. Julie was in hospital for months but when released the real repair work began. No short term memory, mood swings, zero to minus tolerance and irrational irritability to name just a few symptoms.
Paul was a repetitive snorer. Sufficiently loud that his wife sometimes slept in the spare room. When booking vacation they used to book separate hotel rooms so that Paul`s wife could sleep. When Paul lost his job his family found him to be very difficult to get along with and he became steadily more depressed.
Finally Paul was persuaded to go to his doctor who prescribed an expensive device called a CPAP to help Paul during the night. He was meant to wear the mask when he went to sleep. What they did not know at that time was that some time before Paul had stopped breathing during the night for quite a long interval. This reduced the amount of oxygen to the brain causing injury to the brain. Paul was in fact, recovering from a brain injury.
The experience of Vera, Julie and Paul can help to teach us how to recognise a brain injury. Please keep in mind that I am not a doctor. I have helped my wife through years of rehabilitation and through a voluntary organisation I have helped both sufferers and caregivers to overcome the difficulties of rehabilitation.
There are numerous little indicators or signs that tell if someone has suffered a brain injury and I will detail here the seven most prominent.
Sign One. Short term memory loss. Our short term memory deals with the reason we are holding a conversation, why we went into the kitchen or the subject of an article we were reading. In Julie`s case whilst she could remember things from ten years ago, she could not remember things from ten minutes back. With Julie it took years to get her short term memory to an acceptable level. Vera would be a couple of paragraphs into an article and then lose the thread of the story.
Sign Two. Irrational irritability.Paul was a factory foreman supervising seven workers whilst maintaining his own output on one machine or another. Juggling schedules as well and always with a cheerful outlook. After his brain injury through sleep apnoea he suffered a mood change. He would snap at his charges at work and his young son and daughter would avoid him as much as possible. They chose to deal with their mother instead of Paul. Julie had some real vicious mood swings after coming out of the hospital and would snap at me for nothing then five minutes later be all smiles. Ten years down the line the irrational irritability is still there only just about ten percent of its previous ferocity.
Sign Three. Short attention span. Julie used to have a demanding job handling the running of a fleet of hundreds of vehicles. She would have up to twenty queries all hanging in the air at once. By the end of the day all would be sorted satisfactorily and everyone happy. In one year Julie saved the company half a million pounds in fuel costs alone by a diligent assessment of where and how fuel was purchased. After the accident Julie can only manage one task at a time as she loses concentration far to quickly. She becomes distracted easily and needs to be left alone to focus on the task in hand.
Sign Four. Balance problems. In Acute cases, a brain injury sufferer will sometimes feel dizzy and have a sensation that their muscles are not cooperating. This often results in difficulty maintaining balance whilst walking or carrying out demanding tasks. Julie loves riding her horse but since the accident her balance is very poor and she has fallen off several times as a result of not being able to balance well enough. A few days after returning to work Vera fell down the stairs. Fortunately she wasn't hurt but this made her doubt her abilities and she grew sad and depressed.
Sign Five. Reduced cognitive power. We take our powers of reasoning for granted. So when our thinking and reasoning powers are affected and we do not know the reason is a brain injury, the result can be depression, suicidal thoughts and generally giving up on life. Since a persons cognitive powers lie in their ability to reason, to analyse and to articulate their thoughts it is very important to recognise when these powers are reduced. When Paul was able to return to work he found that operating machines that were second nature before now needed total concentration. Even routine operations required a degree of focus that Paul found difficult although before he had hardly needed to give them a second thought.
Sign Six. Loss of self confidence. The old advice when you fall off a bicycle is to get straight back on so you don`t lose confidence. People who have suffered a brain injury often lose their self confidence. It is as if the fell of the bicycle but forgot they are supposed to get back on. Vera`s injury was outwardly so slight that the hospital did not keep her overnight.From the time she went home Vera was feeling at a loss as to what she should do. She felt as though the wind had been knocked out of her. The feeling was more mental than Physical. Driving had been no problem to Vera before but suddenly she worried about getting behind the wheel She especially began to dread driving at night and had visions of losing control and crashing. Vera had never worried about this before.
Sign Seven. Depression and black moods. Psychologists will explain that depression can be caused by a situation. Or it can be caused by brain chemistry or body chemistry. Many things can make a person grow depressed. Someone suffering from a brain injury will often, almost routinely, become depressed. Depression can be a symptom of many things but it is also a symptom of a brain injury and this should always be considered.
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