Symptoms of brain injury are not always apparent on the onset.

“Your son is severely brain injured and the chances of recovery are poor” the doctors voice rang out during the very first team meeting. “Go to hell” I said under my breath as I left the meeting. Our son had experienced an anoxic brain injury , stroke and had been “down” (without a heartbeat) for over 10 minutes. Now they tell me to go out and get a life and leave his care up to them at the facility . “I doubt it”. The symptoms of brain injury were not apparent as he lay in a semi comatose state. Comas do seem magical, somehow. The comatose person is exempt from real life. There, but not there. He did not display the typical symptoms of brain injury that often accompany:

Vision disturbances

Changes in Taste and smell

Muscle weakness

Ability to concentrate and pay attention

Memory-Typically short term memory is impacted

Comprehension-both auditory and visual

Fears

Lacking judgement

Decision making and planning

Behavior

Headaches

Speech problems These symptoms of brain injury were child’s play compared to the symptoms we experienced. Upon admittance into the sub acute facility we had witnessed the worst. The constant agitation was worsening. Our son would flail and grunt as his blood pressure would soar. Wild fluctuations in temperature would occur because the small center that regulates the body’s temperature, the hypothalamus, had been damaged. It’s not that our son would perceive a chill, he would really feel it. The struggling and constant movement was hard to bear. We would watch his body contort and move with no meaning. His face moved from side to side so much that he wore his chin raw against the trach which was now in place.The blankness of the coma was somehow easier to take than his complete lack of self awareness. Orders were written to place him on Dilantin which controls any future seizures and also puts him in the slow class in rehabilitation.Not all brain injuries are created equally which is why proper diagnosis is not always possible. The doctors will often tell you the worst and hope for the best. Prognosis is very difficult if not impossible to predict and is often wrong. Our son’s doctor tells me that it takes six months to a year to recover from the physical and of some of the cognitive symptoms of brain injury, although there is a catch: during recovery, a patient may get “stuck” in any phase, and few recover fully, especially in the cognitive realm. So the way our son is now could be the way he will remain forever. “The time for recovery keeps getting pushed back though” since some experts now think there is still potential for improvement for even a decade postinjury.

Symptoms of brain injury vary depending upon the type of injury involved.

Traumatic brain injury is not really called “closed head injury” any longer. Our son has TBI and assuming he lives and doesn’t succumb to the pneumonia or staph infection that plagues nearly everyone after such an accident, he will be known as a TBI survivor. He’s stayed alive in part because there has been no damage to his brain stem, the section in the back of the head on the top of the spinal cord that regulates breathing, heartbeat, and other involuntary functions necessary for life. Many symptoms of TBI include

Vacant stare

Slow to answer questions

Confusion

Disorientation

Slurred speech

Incoordination

Any period of loss of consciousness

Brain stroke A stroke occurs when a blood vessel that brings oxygen and nutrients to the brain either bursts (hemorrhagic stroke) or is clogged by a blood clot or some other mass (ischemic stroke).

Sudden numbness, weakness or paralysis of the face, arm or leg

Sudden confusion

Sudden trouble seeing in one or both eyes

Sudden, severe headache

Sudden dizziness

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 at 3:29 pm and is filed under Symptoms. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.