Return Home Post TBI: Going Home to Parents

Return Home Post TBI: Lori Part Nine 

In part nine we talked to Lori about her return home post TBI and in her case it was returning to live with her parents instead of to the apartment she lived in before her severe brain injury.

You were able to go return home post TBI and go back and live with your parents, correct?

Yes.

Had you been living with your parents before that?

No.  I was in an apartment for a couple months, the first time I ever moved out of my parents’ house.

Do you have a good enough memory of the time you went back to your parents and your return home post TBI , to describe that? 

I remember when I was staying with my parents.  I don’t remember the day that I moved back in with my parents.  I’m sure it was a great day but I don’t remember it.  But I remember moving back in to my parents’ home.  That home was the same home that I lived in from the time I was 7 years old, so I knew that home very well.  And my new bedroom in my parents’ home was the guest, their guest room.  My old bedroom was taken by my little brother.

When I first went back to my parents’ home I wasn’t walking very well.  Actually, because you asked me about walking, I couldn’t walk up and down the stairs, I remembered a technique I used when I was a child where I would go up the stairs backwards by moving my butt up one step at a time, so I remember I did that when I first moved into my parents’ house.

And at first they didn’t give me freedom without them, and it just seems to me that once I learned that butt step walking technique I got more freedom in my house.

What else?  And I remember development at my parents’ house.  I remember that there was a time when I couldn’t take my showers on my own and I remember getting better and I remember my parents had a sauna, a shower sauna in their basement.  I remember that when I first started back at my parents’ house, I was upstairs in the full bathroom and that my mom had to help me into the bath tub and into the shower and out.  And I remember later that I was independent in this sauna shower in my parent’s house.

I remember my mom would sit me in kind of in the middle of the living room where she could work in the kitchen and still keep an eye on me.  And then I remember developing to where I was, where she could let me play outside in the back yard all by myself.  So I remember those kind of developments.

http://tbivoices.com was launched with the drama, Who Am I Again?, starring Lethan Candlish.  In one segment, he lashes out at his parents, shouting, “I’m not Four.”

Anger Problems on the Return Home Post TBI

Do you remember anger at being treated like you were, as our lead guy Lethan (from Who I am Again?) says, “I’m not Four.”  Do you remember anger at being treated like you were 4 with your return home post TBI? 

Yeah.

Tell me about your anger of being treated like you were 4 after your return home post TBI

I’m not so sure that I know. I let some anger out but a lot of it was inside, my thoughts.  And I remember, I, I remember wanting people to talk to me like I was an adult.  I remember anger.  I don’t remember specific anger in that instance, but I do remember that I wanted to be, maybe, I was more angry at myself because I wanted to be that adult that I was, more than I was angry at my family and my friends.

We have found while talking to many survivors that the return home post TBI isn’t always as a wonderful time as you might imagine because this is the time where some of the deficits that survivor may encounter really become reality.

Next in Part Ten – Relationships with Parents Following TBI