Neuro Note #2- TBI

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    I read a blog post entitled "I Got Hit By A Boat" by Tyson Ward to learn more about traumatic brain injuries (TBI). In the blog, Tyson tells the story about the time he and his dad were in a boating accident. Tyson was worse off than his father and was in the hospital for months on end with a traumatic brain injury and was in a coma for quite some time. He had been in rehab facilities, multiple different hospital, had many different surgeries but with no sign of any progression. His doctors told his mom he was going to need to be in a nursing home with full time care for the rest of his life. After 99 days of being in the hospital in a coma, Tyson miraculously woke up one morning. Tyson then goes on the explain the complications of his brain injury to he suffered with after waking up from the coma. Dr. Lancasters lecture on TBI was the extra material that I used to understand what was happening to Tyson as he told his story. 

    I chose this resource because I have a family friend who was also in a boating accident and suffered a spinal cord injury and wanted to see if there were any similarities/differences in the therapy process of recovery. This blog taught me a lot. Not related to this course, but this blog taught me that miracles can happen. None of Tyson's doctors thought he would survive the accident, much less be walking, talking, driving, finishing college, or getting married but he did. Related to this class, I learned that TBI's are different for every patient. The recovery for a TBI can be brutal. Tyson went through almost a full year of therapy and still did not regain all the skills he lost. I learned that with a TBI you can lose a lot of your memory, Tyson couldn't remember the whole last year of his life once coming out of the coma. I also learned even more about how speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, and recreational therapy all work together in an instance like this. I also learned about the risk of seizures after having a TBI. It could be an immediate seizure or a 'long-term" seizure which could happen any time after the TBI, which Tyson ended up having. Something new that I learned was that when you have a TBI the state takes away your driver's license until you can pass a test that they give you. 

    I highly recommend other to read this blog post, especially if you are considering going into therapy as a career. It reminded me to consider the family in this situation. Tyson gave great details of how his family was involved in this process and I liked that. Not only was Tyson injured in the boating accident, but so was his father and so his mother was having to bounce back and forth between the both of them. It was eye opening to see that this actually happens to people and it is possible to make a full comeback from that kind of injury. I also recommend this blog, because it is a real life story, it is not made up. This gave me a real example to look at the recovery and processing of the injury from a different point of view outside of learning about TBI's in the classroom. 

Here is the link to the blog: https://igothitbyaboat.yourwebsitespace.com/index.html


 Resources

Ward, T. (2012).I got hit by a boat. https://igothitbyaboat.yourwebsitespace.com/index.html

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