Understanding Physical Disability After Brain Injury

Stories of Understanding Physical Disability after Brain Injury

The following are stories of real life survivors of brain injury.  Clicking on the titles will take you to their actual story.

The TBI Voice Speaks so that Other Survivors Will Hear

 Angela explains that she wants to do the video because she wants to help other people understand TBI through her experiences.

Return to Work from TBI Without Treatment or Rehabilitation

Before that return to work, she had received no treatment, no guidance as to what to expect.

Insight into Oneself is Changed by Brain Damage

While it is difficult for the brain injured person in real time to have insight into others, they often have remarkable grasp of their own situation. They tend to ruminate over things in unhealthy ways, that can leave them trapped within their own thoughts.

Depression, Anxiety and Survival after Traumatic Brain Injury

While it is difficult for the brain injured person in real time to have insight into others, they often have remarkable grasp of their own situation. They tend to ruminate over things in unhealthy ways, that can leave them trapped within their own thoughts.

Severe Brain Injury Comes with Physical Disability

Coma and severe brain injuries are often followed by severe physical limitations and the need for intensive physical therapy. Betty was one of those cases.

Craig – The Traumatic Brain Injury Survivors Network

“You see all of the web sites that we have made for folks, we’re integrated, so that resources stream right from the sites. It’s our own technology. It consists of prevention. We do a program and it’s called Hidden Epidemic. I was lucky enough to meet a man named Bill Brown and he’s a film producer and he did a film about a kid that had a brain injury. When he was doing the film, he interviewed this kid three times and the kid kept trying to kill himself during the production of this movie. During that time, Bill realized that his life was a living hell because he had a brain injury and he never recognized it until he met this kid. Again, Power of Peer Support and his son committed suicide, and he realized that his son had a brain injury. Just everything clicked when he met this kid and he went on to shoot the Hidden Epidemic. “

Craig – Making Traumatic Brain Injury Information Mandatory

“Families, yeah, start in school, I think, getting all the teachers to know what’s going on. That’s been my goal in Washington, because teachers spend more time with our kids than we do. If teachers think this, they’re always taking drugs and you know it’s not always drugs, you know. And if it is drugs why are they using the drugs? I think we got to get the people who are in contact with our kids most. Doctors aren’t going to do it. You can pass the laws to make them do it, but I think it’s the teachers and the families that have to know what’s going on and once they know what’s going on, just like cancer, it’s no longer a hidden epidemic.”

Gina – Don’t Tell Me You Know How I Feel 

Gina has a difficult time dealing with people that say they know how she feels. She is asked whether on the flip side she has a hard time understanding things from other people’s perspectives? She states; “I do on. My husband’s side sometimes I feel like, you know, you didn’t have this brain injury but how can you not get it? I don’t get, I guess if, on the flip side, if I had to deal with him having the injury, I would probably have a lot of problems understanding.”

Ian – Importance of Family

How do you get people to understand that even though you went through that period where you were, you really did have to be shown how to do everything, that you’re to being who you except for the specific limitations that you just can’t get past? His response was : “Yeah, it’s very difficult. It’s how can you say  unless they’ve actually been there they don’t know. That I’ve been trying to figure out and until somebody comes up with the answer, I guess we’ll never know.” Do you hope that what you’re doing today will help others understand what it is that you do deal with every day?:”I sure hope it does.”

Kelly – Nature of Physical Disability Secondary to Brain Injury

From what you understand, your injury was in what part of your brain?: “It was in my right frontal temporal lobe. It’s right
above the ear, right between the frontal bone, parietal bone, it’s right above the ear.”

Lethan – Community Support After Brain Injury

Lethan talks about how some people will react to him because they do not understand; “I think that’s the biggest tragedy is because there is not – there is so little awareness of brain injury, so little understanding about it in the general population, people don’t – well, in any population, even the medical population, any population there’s so little understanding, people aren’t sure how to deal with it so it’s kind of one of those out of sight out of mind things is kind of the thought process I think goes through a lot of people’s heads or not, not consciously – they’re not trying to be, they’re not trying to be idiots but or dicks but they’re just trying to be  trying to live and trying to do their own thing.”

Michael – You Never Stop Learning the Recovery

What is it you to say to help other people who are going through?: “For one, this is a complete life changer. Two, this is such a new classified disability. Was either ’78 or ’82 is when it finally got classified as a disability. Why do I remember that? I have no clue. I guess because now I go online and I search for TBI. When I first started going online there was nothing at all. Now I go on there there’s, there’s huge amounts of information. Even with all the information, when they try to peg you for a certain that you’re going to be within the like certain stereotype; for example, if you have MS, it has a certain procedure, certain things that happen at certain times. TBI doesn’t fit that way.”