You don’t have many options in Mississippi if you have a brain-injured loved one and you want to place them in a long-term care facility that specializes in TBI, according to The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Miss. There are none in the state.
That’s the sad problem that Robert Sandifer faces with his 34-year-old son Neal, who suffered a TBI when he fell from a deer stand in 2008. Neal is too much for his elderly father and mother to handle. His mom Sara had a brain hemorrhage a few years back and is now confined to a wheelchair herself.
Typical nursing homes are ill-equipped to take care of TBI patients, who can be rambunctious or in some few cases, violent, according to The Clarion-Ledger. Neal was treated at a short-term TBI facility in his home state, and has spent two years at a nursing home in Columbia, Miss.
But the nursing home wants him out by the end of the month, the newspaper reported. A facility in Louisiana will take Neal — at a price of $600 a day, money his family doesn’t have. That means that at this juncture, it looks like Neal will be heading back with his family, which would have a hard time caring for him
The story goes on to note that another TBI patient, Mike Barnes, did very well and showed improvements after staying at a facility in Arkansas, the NeuroRestorative Timber Ridge in Benton, where Neal once spent two years.
Barnes’ mother got the Arkansas facility to accept Mississippi Medicaid, and her son, who was often violent, was in good hands. He was too much for her to handle. But according to The Clarion-Ledger, like the Sandifers, she wishes there was a TBI facility in Mississippi that could care for her son.
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Great information.
Thanks.
My nephew was on a motorcycle over 5 years ago and hit a deer and was air-lifted to North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo, Mississippi. After many ups and downs with TBI and trying to find facilities that would accept a highly functioning TBI with some anger issues, my sister-in-law has taken it upon herself to build a private non-profit gated community in north Mississippi that will hopefully be opened in January 2015. We are just in the beginning stages and have had the land donated for the project which will be in Itawamba County. We have just added a FaceBook page and we are calling the facility “Crossroads Ranch”. I am so glad you have brought some attention to the fact that Mississippi has one of (if not the) highest amount of TBI’s in the country, but has no facilities for long term care. Keep in touch and please direct people to our page if they are in Mississippi, and even southern Tennessee and northwestern Alabama.
Thank you for this information.