Daily Routine After TBI for a Survivor

Daily Routine After TBI: Michael Part Twenty

Michael talks about his daily routine after TBI and  his responsibilities with his wife and his children.  He starts out with the school year. He tells about his daily routine after TBI and the changes in his daily routine after TBI and how that can be significant.  Now let’s talk about your normal daily routine after TBI.

I get up when my wife gets up.  During the school year I’ll take three or four kids to school, take my wife to work, and then I’ll usually come home.  So I’ll turn on the TV.  Next thing I know it’s two hours later, because I fell asleep, and I’ll get up, I’ll eat, I’ll do something that needs to be done,  straighten the kitchen, straighten the TV room.   And then I usually go back and go back to sleep until I have to pick up the kids.

You get up 7:30 in the morning or before that? 

Usually around 7:30.

Kids get to school 8, 8:30? 

About that time, yes. I get home about 8:30.

And then you’re napping by 9?  

Napping by 9 until about 11, and I’ll get up, do something.  Now that it’s more spring/summer-like weather I don’t do very good in the house.  I’m better outdoors.  And then I’ll work on it then I usually come back inside and go to sleep for a while.

And you’ll sleep until when? 

2:30 and then I’ll go, my one child gets out at 3, the other two get out at around quarter after 3.   Jordan my oldest, he’s going to Boys and Girls Club, which is helpful.  He has Asperger’s and Tourette’s, and he’s diagnosed with ADHD, so sometimes we can conflict and we don’t, we understand each other but it’s hard. So with him going to Boys and Girls Club  his mom gets off work, we usually pick him up  6 or 7 is good.  And then he’ll come home, take his nighttime meds and usually he’s out cold.  Ali sometimes goes there.  Jason is too young.  Colin usually no.

Jason’s how old? 

He’s 6.

So all your kids are in grade school. 

Yes. Kindergarten to third grade, and one’s going into eighth I think.  He’s in seventh now.

Your afternoons, what are they like? 

Right now?  Sometimes if I do, after I finish, I have a friend of mine, she is also in my local brain trauma group at Saint Agnes Hospital.  I’ll go over and visit with her, because she can’t work, because she has a very severe seizure disorder.  She’ll have anywhere from three to five seizures a day. I’ll usually visit with her for a couple hours until (her significant other gets home.)  We’re good friends, he’s done a lot for me, and then usually I’ll stay, sometimes I’ll invite them to dinner, or they’ll invite me to dinner and the kids.

To view: Daily Routine After TBI Evenings with your wife? 

Evenings with my wife.  (We) go through phases.  Right now I’m in a phase to where I like to stick close and hug my wife and, you know.   And then sometimes it goes the other extreme, to where all I want to do is stay up late and be on the computer.  And she’s learning to handle both of those.

Had you guys lived together before you got married? 

Yes.  We moved in, I moved in there in May of 2009, when we lived on Ledge View.

Change in Daily Routine After TBI

So she’s really been accustomed to your normal daily routine after TBI? 

Actually she’s a music therapist at the Lutheran Home, and she actually has.  From the first girl I dated to my wife, all of them said oh, we’ll be able to handle it.  But with people who are have TBI understand this – we can go for a while and be absolutely fine.  Then all of a sudden something hits and we’re thrown off kilter.  My first girlfriend and my wife couldn’t handle that.  Becky is starting to see patterns, which is kind of odd because with TBI you usually don’t see patterns.

What patterns do you think she’s recognized? 

She’s starting to see when I go into my, I guess depressive state, to where, and then she’ll see where I’m starting to go into my normal, and she’s really starting to see when I go into my manic.  She has to hide all the credit cards.

Next in Part Twenty One  – Mood Disorders Complicate Brain Injury

By Attorney Gordon Johnson

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