Give. It. A. Minute.

One of the most common mistakes that brain injury survivors’ loved ones make after an injury is not giving the survivors enough time to respond or take an action.  For instance, a survivor and his family may be at a restaurant for dinner.  When the survivor is struggling to place his order, a family member may jump in to place the order for him.  If given enough time, the survivor may have been perfectly able to place the order but the family member did not give him enough time to respond.

There are a few reasons why survivors’ loved ones tend to not give enough time to the survivor to respond or take an action.   One reason is that silence is uncomfortable.  For instance, if a survivor is needing extra time to respond, the silence may be so uncomfortable that the loved one will jump in and speak “for” the survivor.  A second reason is that is uncomfortable to watch someone struggle.  As an example, a survivor may be slowly, and with great effort, reach toward an item on a table.  The loved one may be so uncomfortable watching the survivor’s struggle that they reach over to get the item for the survivor.  A third reason is the feeling that the survivor and loved ones are in a rush or feel like they are causing someone else to slow down.  For instance, a survivor in a wheelchair may be pedaling down a hospital hallway but family members, concerned that the wheelchair is blocking the nurses, decide to push the survivor’s wheelchair to more quickly reach their destination.

However, it is important to give the survivor more time.  First, and most importantly, if the survivor is able to make a response or take an appropriate action when given extra time, they should be allowed the independence and respect to do so.  By unnecessarily jumping in, loved ones are taking away the power and the dignity of the survivor to take care of their own needs.  Second, although a survivor may need extra time and effort to complete a task, they are more likely to get faster and more efficient over time with practice.  By doing the task for them, the loved one is taking away vital practice from the survivor who is trying to master a task.  Third, the survivor may need extra time to safely complete an activity.  After an injury, certain tasks may have concrete steps which take time or require more processing time to successfully finish without risk.  For example, most uninjured individuals simply stand up when they are ready to leave a room.  A survivor may have to go through multiple steps to safely transfer from sitting to standing.  These steps require extra time so the survivor can safely transfer.

When wondering about the survivor’s need for extra time and if they should jump in, loved ones should ask themselves the following questions:

1.  Is the task truly out of the survivor’s skill range or do I just need to be more patient to allow them to complete the task?
2. Are we actually in a rush or is a little extra time a reasonable request?  For example, if a survivor needs an extra ten seconds to place an order at a restaurant, keep in mind that the waitstaff is getting paid to serve you.  Ten extra seconds is not an unreasonable request.
3. What message am I giving to the survivor if I do not allow them to do for themselves when they are able to so?
4. Is the issue really about the survivor needing extra time or my personal discomfort in this situation?
5. By going faster, have I compromised my or the survivor’s safety?

In most cases, a little extra time will help a brain injury survivor be more successful and allow everyone to have a better experience!

Learn about brain injury treatment services at the Transitional Learning Center! Visit us at: http://tlcrehab.org/

Different Parts, Different Speeds

Brain injury survivors and their families often ask doctors and therapists about how long it will take for brain injuries to heal.  This would seem like a simple and straightforward question, but the answer to this question is actually quite complex.  One of the chief factors that makes any such answer so complex is that different parts of the brain may heal at different speeds.

We often talk about the brain as if it were one unitary body part, but in truth it is made up of many interconnected parts.  For instance, there are distinct left and right sides of the brain that are connected by a set of neurons known as the corpus callosum.  Each side of the brain can be split into many different component parts.  These parts function interdependently, but each part has its own unique purpose.

When a survivor received a brain injury, different areas of the brain may have been damaged at different levels of severity.  Which parts suffered damage at what levels of severity will differ from person to person and from injury to injury.   With so many parts of the brain being impacted differently by an injury, it is very common that a brain injury survivor will see improvements in some areas faster than in others.  For instance, if the part of the brain responsible for speech comprehension was less injured than the speech production part of the brain, that survivor will likely gain back the ability to understand verbal communication well before ability to convey information through speech returns.  If the part of the brain governing leg movement was less injured than the part of the brain controlling the arms, then that person is likely to see a return of the ability to walk through a doorway prior to being able to once again turn a door knob to open that door.  Ultimately, having different skills return at different rates of speed should be understood as a normal and expected part of the brain injury recovery process.

Learn about brain injury treatment services at the Transitional Learning Center! Visit us at: http://tlcrehab.org/

A Little Note Goes A Long Way

As Thanksgiving approaches, many brain injury survivors are preparing for large get-togethers with family and friends.  Many of these family and friends have not recently seen the survivors in their lives and can understandably be extremely excited to be reunited.  However, there are often a great many changes that survivors have weathered which directly impact their experiences of Thanksgiving with these family and friends.  Close family members may be aware of these changes but extended family and friends may not be.  Email or similar communications can help spread necessary awareness to help ensure successful holiday celebrations.

These communications can be sent by the survivors or by close family members prior to any get-together. The goal is for individuals who are not fully informed of the survivors’ deficits to be given relevant information in order to help holiday celebrations run smoothly.  For instance, if alcohol is typically served at a Thanksgiving meal, friends and family need to know if the survivor is prohibited by a doctor from drinking.  If the survivor becomes agitated when there are too many people surrounding him or her, family and friends need to know to approach the survivor one at a time.  If the survivor can only tolerate food of a certain consistency, family and friends need to know which foods can or cannot be served the survivor.  These are just a few examples of useful information that could be included in a message sent to help avoid problems during a survivor’s Thanksgiving celebration.  Remember, a little note can go a long way toward success!

Learn about brain injury treatment services at the Transitional Learning Center! Visit us at: http://tlcrehab.org/

Grounding Identity

Living through the brain injury experience can represent quite the assault on a survivor’s identity.  Previously athletic survivors may now struggle to walk.  Previously active and industrious survivors may now be unemployed.  Instead of being in charge at the workplace,  a survivor now is given a list of externally defined rules to follow essential to his or her rehabilitation.  All of this can cause notable emotional strain on a survivor.  Contending with the inevitable alterations wrought by such an injury to the perception of  one’s own identity is no small thing.  Sometimes rather than focusing on all of these changes, it is worthwhile to instead concentrate on those aspects of the survivor’s identity that have remained stable in spite of the injury.  It is often helpful to write down these stable aspects to help visualize and internalize the truth that many of the attributes that have always defined the survivor’s identity at core remain just as relevant post-injury.

Here are a few of these aspects with strong potential to remain stable following an injury:
1.  Family relationships – An injury does not change the fact that a survivor holds family roles as a parent, child or sibling.
2. Life Experiences/Memories – An injury does not negate the many life experiences that a survivor has accumulated.  These experiences can originate in work, school, family or any other facet of life.
3. Interests/Hobbies – An injury is unlikely to change a survivor’s interests and tastes in things like music, food and sports.
4. Knowledge – An injury will almost never fully erase a survivor’s knowledge acquired over years of life experiences.  As example, a survivor who is a truck driver will generally remember all of the quickest routes across town.
5. Personality – An injury may not change a survivor’s personality.  For instance, a survivor who was a hard worker prior to an injury will very likely be just as hard a worker after.
6. Physical Characteristics – An injury may not alter certain physical characteristics.  A brain injury will not change the color of a survivor’s eyes or hair.  For many survivors, overall facial appearance does not change at all (or sees only minor changes) following an injury.
7. Beliefs – An injury will generally have no effect at all upon a survivor’s belief system.  For example, a lifelong Democrat will almost never suddenly begin voting Republican post-injury.

By spending time identifying and shifting focus upon the stable facets of survivors identities, survivors can better emotionally ground themselves as they navigate the brain injury experience.

Learn about brain injury treatment services at the Transitional Learning Center! Visit us at: http://tlcrehab.org/

 

 

 

Life, Brain Injury and Repairing with Gold

There is a fascinating art form originating from Japan called “kintsugi” (a name formed from the Japanese root words meaning “golden” and “joining”).  In this form of art, broken pottery is repaired by using lacquer mixed with gold, silver or platinum.  Rather than being hidden, these cracks are instead highlighted, enhanced and made to reveal an entirely separate and distinct beauty.  Kintsugi is connected to the philosophy of “wabi-sabi” which means “finding beauty in broken or old things”.  This is not really a philosophy of items but a deeper spiritual concept informing a healthy approach to the world around us.

This idea of making the cracks more beautiful rather than trying to hide the break is an amazing metaphor for post-injury growth.  Survivors should not feel the need to hide or be embarrassed by their injuries.  Survivors never asked to have brain injuries, the events simply happened.  But there is a great deal of opportunity to use an injury and the rehabilitation process to take beautiful steps forward in life.  Some TLC patients have taken their experiences and used them to educate others about brain injuries.  Rather than shying away, they put themselves out front and center so as to benefit others in a powerful way that typical rehabilitation professionals do not have access to.  These survivors can speak from the authority conferred by actually having lived through the injury experience, lending their words an innate credibility that similar statements from health care and rehabilitation professionals can sometimes lack.  Other TLC patients have used their injuries as impetus to reach out to family and rekindle strained relationships.  Relatives who had not spoken for years were able to be reunited through response to these injuries.  Still other TLC patients have used their injuries to take their lives in healthier directions, such as returning to school, getting better jobs or cultivating sobriety.  Each of these steps forward is a way of taking the breaks in life created by brain injuries and repairing them with a “golden joining”, so that the survivors engage the world in an undeniably changed but potentially more beautiful and impactful way than before those changes wrought by their injuries.

Learn about brain injury treatment services at the Transitional Learning Center!  Visit us at: http://tlcrehab.org/

 

It’s Ok To Do It Differently

When I was a senior in high school, I had a physics teacher whose outlook differed from that of most science teachers.  Early in the year she told us that when we answered questions on her tests, she did not care about how we came to a given answer.  As long as that answer was correct, the method by which it was arrived upon did not matter.  Work did still have to be shown as in any other science class.  Even if that work bore no resemblance to that which she had prescribed though, a result was perfectly acceptable provided that the answers matched.

In many ways a healthy approach to rehabilitation is similar to this outlook championed by my former physics teacher.  Due to their injuries, rehabilitation patients are often unable to complete tasks in the same manner as they did before.  For instance, a patient with only one functioning hand will not be able to cut vegetables for a salad as he or she did prior to the injury but utilizing a one-handed rocker knife produces the same results.  A patient who has trouble speaking may not be able to verbally place an order at a restaurant but typing the order into an Ipad speech app produces the same results.  As you can see, there are often multiple methods by which to accomplish a given goal.  Effectiveness is the most important measure of a method’s worth, not whether it is identical to a previous method.

The idea of reaching the same goal through different methods sometimes bothers patients and their families.  In some cases, patients and their families refuse to use alternative methods because they are focused on doing things in exactly the same way as they have in the past.  A patient completing minor tasks just as he or she did prior to an injury holds strong appeal as a signifier of a return to normalcy.  However, due to the injuries this may not be realistic either at this stage of rehabilitation or for the foreseeable future.  Accepting alternative methods consistently allows patients to be far more functional in both work and home environments.  These alternative methods often allow patients to be more independent whereas insistence upon pre-injury methods can  bring with it a dependence on others.  It is important that patients and their families embrace alternative methods of accomplishing daily goals so that patients can achieve at their highest levels.  This open-minded attitude often yields the best long-term therapy results.

Learn about brain injury treatment services at the Transitional Learning Center: http://tlcrehab.org/

Quick Points on Wheelchair Safety in Parking Lots

Following their injuries, many brain injury survivors are left depending upon wheelchairs to meet basic mobility needs.  This change in mobility creates new safety considerations that must be taken into account on a daily basis.  One of these considerations surrounds strategies for safely navigating a parking lot while in a wheelchair.

Most adults are between 5 and 6.5 feet tall.  They are accustomed to being easily visible to drivers distractedly circling a parking lot and through rear windshields as drivers back up vehicles out of parking spaces.  When sitting in a wheelchair though, normal adults are often effectively no taller than  young children.  Even the most conscientious driver can struggle while exiting a parking space to see a pedestrian in a wheelchair.  These survivors are also often harder to see by a driver making the turn from one parking lot lane on to another.  Due to this change in baseline visibility, survivors in wheelchairs and their families must be more vigilant of vehicle activity and the abilities at every identifiable moment of drivers to see the survivors.  They must spend more time looking around to observe vehicle activity, just as they would when in the presence of a small child who may slip the notice of nearby drivers.

Another issue regarding parking lot safety is that survivors in wheelchairs are generally slower than the average person would be while moving across the same parking lot.  Since it takes more time to traverse any distance, survivors and their families must add extra time in their calculations as to whether there might be enough time to safely cross in front of an approaching vehicle.   If the result of such calculations inspire even the suggestion of doubt, erring on the side of patience is always the best policy.  Sometimes, family and friends may need to push the survivors’ wheelchairs to help move quickly enough to safely avoid traffic.  Additionally, typical adults generally can step up onto the curb from the parking lot at any location they choose.  Survivors in wheelchairs must use curb cut ramps which often means that they have to take a longer route to get onto the curb and consequently spend more time in the path of vehicles.  Again, survivors and their families must be aware of this additional urgency when choosing a path across any parking lot.

These are just a few quick points on wheelchair safety in the parking lot.  I hope everyone has a safe time in their travels, particularly in parking lots!

Learn about brain injury treatment services at the Transitional Learning Center: http://tlcrehab.org/

 

The Problem With the Word “Should”

The word “should” may be one of the most hazardous words in the life of a brain injury survivor.  It tends to appear in sentences such as “I should be walking already” or “I should have been back at my job by now.”  The word confers a tremendous degree of expectation on the survivor and implies that somehow the survivor is a failure if he or she has not achieved what he or she “should” have achieved.  Often, this word sparks a cascade of statements by which survivors verbally punish themselves.  “I should have been able to walk without a wheelchair but I instead I fell.  I should be doing better with my mobility.  I am letting down my whole family!”  These “should” statements can easily lead to depression, stress and damaged self-esteem.

The reality is that each brain injury heals at its own rate and as a result each survivor is left with his or her own unique set of challenges.  After a serious brain injury, it often takes a survivor considerably longer than he or she may expect to reach goals due to the severity of the injury suffered.  An injured brain is not like a broken arm.  You cannot put a brain in a cast as you would put an arm, expecting that in a relatively brief period of time the brain will be healed.  Brain injury rehabilitation is a process that takes time and patience.  The only applicable “should” enters into consideration in emphasizing that the survivor should dedicate full effort to his or her therapies.  That is all anyone, including the survivor, can reasonably ask for.  As long as the survivor is giving his or her best effort, the survivor is doing everything in his or her power to get better.  The rest of the process will depend on time, the practicing and learning of new skills and how the survivor’s individul brain heals following a specific injury.  Recovery cannot be rushed or forced.  “Should” statements that imply that somehow recovery ought to have gone differently are thus plainly revealed as emotional snares best avoided.

 

Learn about brain injury treatment services at the Transitional Learning Center: http://tlcrehab.org/

 

Why Are We “Suddenly” Hearing About Brain Injuries

Brain injuries are a hot topic in today’s media.  Whether it be football players with lasting damage due to concussions, soldiers suffering from brain injuries due to overseas conflicts or the latest youth sports concussion protocols, it seems that there are suddenly many news stories on brain injury that simply were not around just five or ten years ago.  Some individuals may be cynical and wonder whether brain injuries are simply the “diagnosis of the moment”, one of the many diagnoses that are suddenly “hot” but will disappear over time.  To those individuals, I would like to offer several rational reasons why brain injury stories have become more prominent over the last few years.

First, many people are now living with brain injuries who would have died from their injuries in previous eras.  The medical world has advanced significantly over the years and now doctors are able to save the lives of people who would have otherwise died. However, just because their lives were saved does not mean they emerged from their health emergency unscathed.  These survivors often have brain injuries which require treatment.  Please allow me to give an example of this change over time.  I once was talking over lunch with an older rabbi about Transitional Learning Center.  He relayed a story about his time at a synagogue many decades ago in Indiana.  A young man in his community had a serious motorcycle accident and as his rabbi, he visited the young man in the hospital.  After conversing for a while and finishing his visit, the rabbi exited the room.  As he left, the doctor pulled him aside and said “You know he will be dead in three days”.  The rabbi was shocked, having just had a full conversation with the young man.  But the doctor was correct.  The hospital had no means to manage his brain injury.  Due to either brain swelling, bleeding or both (the rabbi did not know the details), the young man passed three days later.  Today, a person with a similar motorcycle accident would have a surgery and other potential procedures to manage his injury and would stand a good chance of living, albeit with a brain injury.  Similarly, improvements in military field medicine are allowing many soldiers to survive blasts and other dangers that would have killed them in previous battles.  Thankfully, these soldiers still have their lives, but often struggle with long-lasting brain injuries suffered in their military service.

Second, it is important to acknowledge the active suppression of information regarding brain injuries in certain circles that is only recently coming to light.  Most famously, the NFL actively denied and hid data on the long-term brain injury effects of concussions to former football players.  Through a series of lawsuits, the NFL opened up about brain injuries and is now acknowledging the long-term injuries that many former players have suffered.  This has led to a complex $1 billion settlement for players with long-term effects of brain injuries.  Following these court cases, many other lawsuits have been filed against other professional and amateur sports, leading to further agreements and new safety protocols.  The suppression in the past contributed to an artificial perception that brain injuries were less common than they actually were.

Third, we are in an age of information so it is much easier to learn about what is happening to people across the country, and even across the world.  Just think about how often you hear or read stories about a robbery or kidnapping occurring hundreds of miles from where you live.  Until the age of the internet, most of those stories would be confined to local media.  Now, stories can go “viral” and suddenly everyone knows the details.  This phenomenon is equally true in the realm of brain injuries.  A simple keyword search of “brain injury” will bring up a plethora of local stories that prior to the age of the internet would have been hidden from most of the world.  These local stories existed in the past but only now d0 we have so much access to them.

Fourth, we are now having a more honest conversation about brain injuries.  In the past, people generally did not talk about brain injuries.  Athletes and soldiers rarely mentioned their deficits due to fear of sounding “weak”.  Individuals with brain injury deficits from car accidents, strokes or other methods were often afraid of negative views and discrimination if others knew about their deficits.  We are now coming to an age of sharing without fear.  It may be hard to believe but the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), the civil rights legislation that has allowed for a greater involvement of people with disabilities in the workplace without fear of discrimination, was only passed in 1990.  In comparison, the Civil Rights Act, which blocked discrimination due to issues such as race, gender, and religion, was passed in 1964.

Fifth, we are much more able to diagnose and treat brain injuries than in the past.  Technology such as MRI and CT exams to scan the brain and locate injuries are relatively new.  Moreover until fairly recently many people, even health professionals, did not even know the right questions to ask to identify a potential brain injury.  For instance, if a high school athlete is concussed in a game today, the coach and athletic trainer often have a protocol to follow to ensure proper health management.  Twenty years ago, the player would likely have been just given smelling salts, asked if he or she felt “okay” and sent back into the game.  In fact, many states now have mandatory concussion training for coaches and athletic trainers.  This was unheard of just a few years ago.  In the past, people with brain injuries were forced to suffer in the silence of unrecognized deficits.  Now, these brain injuries and their concomitant deficits are more likely to be accurately diagnosed.

Overall, there are many rational reasons why we are “suddenly” hearing about brain injuries in the media, despite these injuries having been an issue in the past.

Learn about brain injury treatment services at the Transitional Learning Center: http://tlcrehab.org/

 

 

Just Be Grateful

“Just be grateful you are alive”

“Just be thankful you didn’t die”

“You should just focus on the fact you survived”

Brain injury survivors hear these types of well-meaning lines all the time.  They are used by family members and friends to help survivors see the “brighter side” during their recovery periods.  There is undeniable truth in each one of these statements; traumatic brain injuries, strokes and other forms of acquired brain injuries lead to death for millions of people worldwide every year.  It is worthwhile to be thankful for life.  But these well-intentioned statements can all too often serve as double-edged swords.

Taking a step back for a moment, most survivors are truly thankful to be alive following their near-death experiences.  But that does not mean that they have not suffered real, painful losses.  While one may feel the commendable impulse to encourage and support survivors, it is also important to allow them to mourn these losses.  There is nothing inherently wrong with lamenting loss of arm function or fluid speech, as long as this does not lead to a serious decline in mood or performance.  For instance, wouldn’t any person be upset if, after decades of normal walking, he or she would have to suddenly learn how to walk all over again because of a stroke?  A balance has to be struck between fostering positive mood and allowing for reasonable mourning of loss.  “Just be grateful you are alive” is clearly not an inherently harmful statement, but it can still nonetheless be overused and thus inhibit healthy adjustment to change.  Excessive  repetition of such a statement can often cause survivors to be frustrated and feel as if they are being discouraged from expressing their feelings.  Though it may be difficult for family members or friends to witness as survivors experience sadness or anger, this is often one of the steps necessary while making a successful transition into post-injury life.

 

Learn about brain injury treatment services at the Transitional Learning Center: http://tlcrehab.org/