Recovery from Severe Brain Injury Is Ongoing

Recovery from Severe Brain Injury Is Ongoing : TJ Part Nineteen

The textbooks say – the doctors are taught – brain injury recovery happens primarily in the first year and is largely over by the end of the second.  Our stories paint a much brighter picture of continuing recovery with recovery from severe brain injury is ongoing.  I asked Michelle about this in TJ’s case:

If you were looking at it in terms of  how he was at 3 years versus how he is at 6 years, do you see recovery from severe brain injury is ongoing?

Definitely.  I remember they had told me that he would plateau.  And when we hit that mark I was devastated because I was like, this cannot be as good as this is going to  get.

And what was that, 24 months?

Yeah.  Two years.  And I saw the vast amount of improvement after that point, so I was like, how can they even tell people this?  And you’re so, focused and fixated on what they’re telling you and then I was like, no, this cannot be as good as it’s going to  get.

He said he had two rounds of speech therapy.  Because recovery from severe brain injury is ongoing. Has he had more than that ?

Well, no, he had speech therapy in Spaulding and then we had speech, we went every day to outpatient therapy from July until November in Connecticut (in the year of his injury.)

Did he have any speech therapy after that because his recovery from severe brain injury is ongoing?

Once we came down here he had, yes, he had therapy down here.  We’ve done a lot of different kinds, they have a little bit different systems down here.  They have what’s called interactive metronome down here, so he went through that therapy.

What is that?

It’s where they hear different sounds in their ears and they have to clap or tap their foot in different (sequences).

I actually saw that being demonstrated at a program, near Fort Lauderdale yesterday.

Yeah.  See, and up north we never had that.

Did that help?

He went through the program.  I didn’t see any improvement.

Did he ever play an instrument before he got hurt?

No.

No interest in music?

No.  And I do know people that go through and music therapy has been quite helpful.  There is a girl in our group that she can’t remember five minutes ago and yet she remembered the words to a brand new song that came out on the radio.  They explained to me that, that, that sound of music is a different part of the brain than our speech, so.

Next in Part Twenty  – Mood Possible Seizure Symptoms

By Attorney Gordon Johnson

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