Frontal Lobe Issues: No Preparation Before Discharge

Frontal Lobe Issues: Craig Part Eleven

Craig discusses some of the problems that he is having with frontal lobe issues and how there wasn’t any preparation for this when he was discharged.

Amnesia One of the Frontal Lobe Issues

While we were off camera, you had some additional thoughts about the amnesia questions.

Well, yeah, just a lot of things that, the timelines, are kind of confusing and how to, how to figure  them  out.  I’d say a good year and a half the timelines are jumbled in my head.   Even though I remember weeks before the accident I don’t remember much of my childhood,  which is a good thing.  But part of my injury was because of my childhood, and I’m not going to get into that because it’s kind of bad, but I was in foster homes for most of my early life and so I spent a lifetime processing that, and a lot of that I remember coming back out.

When you say “part of my injury was because of my childhood” what you’re trying to say is one of the frontal lobe issues that I had after my injury was that I had to work through some of these psychological issues from my childhood?

They all came back out again after, yeah, just like they were fresh.

Can you explain that?

Well, some of the beatings that I got in the foster homes. I was in one abusive one in particular and I pretty much dealt with a lot of counseling over the years.  It was like they all resurfaced again, which was interesting because I was really at peace with  them  before the injury.  Or at least thought I was.  So a lot of my childhood stuff, a lot of animosity toward my parents, for  being in that situation and stuff that I dealt with and let go, I had to re‑deal with again.

Was it like having to go through adolescence again because of frontal lobe issues you were experiencing?

Oh, without a doubt, yeah.  A lot of my behavior was like when I was 10 or 12 years old for a while. I had to retrain the bad – I was basically doing behavior supports for myself again.  Nobody ever said that this could happen.  You might have some impulsive words coming out, I mean, which is pretty common.  I mean, that would be the first thing I’d tell somebody, that’s kind of normal.   Nobody ever told my wife this is going to happen. I mean, knowledge is really power.  I mean, just knowing that this could happen, it don’t fix it but it helps.

Even though your wife was a physical therapist she had never encountered behavioral issues caused by frontal lobe issues after a severe brain injury before?

Yeah because her job was to get people ready to go home.  She was: get  them up, get  them walking.  So she didn’t deal with, in an occupational role, occupation or the speech language stuff.  It was just the physical part, get them out of bed and make sure they’re safe to leave.

Next in Part Twelve – Spasticity Problems Missed After Severe Traumatic Brain Injury