MsSissy
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Member since 3/07 39159 total posts
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An interesting article from todays Newsday brain injuries
It's long but I believe it's worth reading. I think this a great reminder that ANY hit on the head should receive medical attention.
LINK
A CALL TO AWARENESS
The former mayor of Sag Harbor lives with the up-and-down effects of a freak bookstore accident
BY LAUREN FORTMILLER | Lauren Fortmiller was mayor of Sag Harbor from 2001 to 2003.
March 22, 2009
When I heard the news of Natasha Richardson's head injury while skiing, I wept: for her, for her family, for the loss to the world of a gifted artist, but also for myself.
I have been struggling with the disabling effects of so-called mild traumatic brain injury for decades. Usually I can rise above self-pity. Sometimes, however, I am overwhelmed by the frustration of trying to live within the confines of my altered brain. For instance, I have a master's degree in writing poetry, yet now, even writing this essay causes me physical pain, confusion and tears.
How many lives are silently destroyed by our collective ignorance about head injury? How many soldiers returning from Iraq, for instance, are refused treatment because their particular injuries don't show up on CT scans or MRIs, because they cannot articulate how their lives have changed, because the doctors they see do not know what they were before the injury?
My brain injury occurred in 1996. I was working in an independent bookstore in East Hampton. Oversized books sheared off a high shelf above the checkout counter and jack-hammered the back of my head. Dizzy, and embarrassed by the sudden silence among the customers, I bent to pick up the books. At that moment, a similar load of books on the next shelf also cascaded down on the back of my head. Later, I calculated that about 70 pounds of books fell each time, first from a height of about 5 feet, then 7 feet.
I asked the store manager if I could sit in the back room for a while. I thought I remembered going back to work, but she says I sat on the little oak school chair all day. Every time she came to check on me, I said I was fine. I drove home, but immediately fell asleep on the couch. That was a Friday.
On Saturday, I went back to the store but felt increasingly disoriented. By Sunday, light was so distressing to me that I could not open my eyes. I asked my boss for a few days off, sure that I would recover quickly. On Monday, I started having seizures.
Because my brain was not bleeding, a CT scan showed no physical abnormality. For five years, the Worker's Compensation insurance company sent me to psychiatrists, neurologists, a specialist in pain management for the headaches, a specialist in panic disorders for biofeedback training. I was prescribed tranquilizers that gave me tremors, sleeping pills to overcome the extreme vertigo when I lie down, and anti-seizure medications that made me feel like a zombie.
Finally, a friend found a book on mild traumatic brain injury. Following the book's suggestion, I persuaded the insurance company to pay for a battery of performance tests with a neuropsychologist. Among other revelations, the test showed that despite graduating summa cum laude from college, I was now reading on a second-grade level.
My performance was consistent with injury to my left frontal lobe, the site opposite where the books hit. This is a whiplash injury, caused by the brain slamming into the skull. Minute neural axons are torn or twisted, disrupting the transmission of messages from one brain cell to the next. This does not show on the imaging technology we have now.
The insurance at last agreed to pay for cognitive rehabilitation, though the first six months to two years after such an injury are the critical period for the most effective therapy. I never went because the trip to New York City for the therapy was impossible for me physically and mentally.
I did reach a level of recovery that made me need to test myself, to be of use again. Since I'd been involved in village government as the chair of the environmental review committee before the injury, I decided to run for mayor. I became the first woman elected mayor of Sag Harbor. But because I had lost the capacity to visualize the future, I had no idea how difficult the job would be for me.
I agreed to three appointments at the same time in locations miles apart. Sometimes I had to call in as a bad brain day, or go home early. The secretary across the hall kept orange juice in her office refrigerator, since it sometimes helped stave off a seizure, and electrolyte water, which sometimes helped with the pain after a seizure. A friend called the office every day to ask if I remembered to eat lunch. I soon designated an appointment secretary.
The experience of being mayor was probably the most effective cognitive therapy I could have had. Still, I am walking around with a paper head. Any small knock causes further damage. This fall, my dog's head hit my chin. I suffered headaches for a week, periods of vertigo for several weeks, and lost the ability to process familiar calls in my square dancing class.
Since my injury, the medical definition of concussion has changed to eliminate loss of consciousness. Incidents in professional sports have led to an understanding that injury from concussion is cumulative. More people wear helmets for sports activities. But symptoms develop subtly over time; they come and go. When people see me in a "normal" moment, they assume I am cheating to be on permanent disability. Then they see me suddenly unable to talk, walk across a room or get myself out of church.
The newscaster Bob Woodruff, hit by a roadside bomb in Iraq, clearly had the best of care immediately, and he is now able to do much good in publicizing the life-altering effects of brain injury. Many others are denied treatment because their injury does not show in a picture. They simply try to cope with a completely changed life.
Teachers may assume a student is lazy, when actually she is trying harder than ever. Most doctors no longer have a lifetime relationship with their patients. They don't know the "before" in order to judge the "after." Athletes will "man up" after a collision and try to get back in the game.
Those of us who live with the effects of brain injury need to help others understand. We need to overcome our embarrassment at looking perfectly healthy and yet not being able to answer the question, "What do you do for a living?" We need to overcome our fear of losing what independence we still have, like the right to drive a car. We need to speak up about our needs.
And everyone needs to be aware that any head injury may become serious, even if the injured person seems to shake it off initially, the way Natasha Richardson did.
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