Pain After Traumatic Brain Injury: Walking Caused Most Pain

Pain After Traumatic Brain Injury: Zach Part Eleven

In part eleven Zach and I discussed the pain he suffered and how walking was the source of most of his pain after traumatic brain injury.

How long were you in Spaulding?

Two months.

So it’s middle of July when you got out?

I got out right before July 4.

Did you come home from there?

Yes.

Give me a feel for what you do in the last week or two at Spaulding.

Just practice walking pretty much.  We got to like leave and we did like day trips and stuff like that.  One of our day trips was canoeing on the Charles River.  And another one was biking and stuff.  And it’s like modified biking.   So you’d like sit down and sit up.

So what was your balance like?

My balance?  My balance was poor then, but I think, my balance is okay now.  It’s just my coordination, like when I have to move and keep balance, at the same time it’s tricky.

So by the time you had relearned to walk, you weren’t having problems with falling down?

When they let me go, I could walk on my own, yeah.

Now you said you had to relearn to walk with a broken foot and the pain after traumatic brain injury.  What did they do about the broken foot?

I kind of laughed because it was probably the most painful thing I’ve ever had happen to me in my life.  After I got out and I was still walking on my own and then you know we made a family decision, it’s time. We should be able to hopefully fix this problem.  So I got surgery on it. What they did was they took the bone chips out of my foot and then they shaved the bone down.  Then yeah, yeah, you’ll be able to walk and don’t worry about it.

So I’m like ok, that’s cool.  So I get up, I go to stand out of the hospital bed. I was just, I was in probably the most pain I’ve ever felt in my life. I thought my foot, I thought they amputated it you know, like it was terrible.

When did they do that surgery?

It was like August, September.

How long was it before you recovered from that surgery?

I was good after like, a month.

To sum up Zach’s pain after traumatic brain injury he talks about how much pain walking was for him.  He stated that he had never been in so much pain i his life as we was in pain after traumatic brain injury

Next in Part Twelve –

Community Support Coming Home From TBI Rehab