The Game is Still Wide Open!

I started this label, A Case for Hope, to talk about the distance I've come in my own recovery. It's seen me go from a coma to something approaching normal in about three years. Recently, however, I've come across several stories that made me want to say more about hope.

My first point is that the brain is an exceptionally complex piece of equipment (and the bold text's because I mean it!). Quite simply, it's light years from being even close to properly understood! It often amazes me how willing people are to treat it as something that is reasonably well understood when, really, we've got no idea! For instance, scientists don't yet even understand why humans (or any mammal for that matter) need to sleep! Don't believe me? Take a look at this BBC article.

Since we don't come close to understanding the brain, it seems obvious we won't really understand recovery from brain injury. Three years in to my recovery, I am only now getting an appreciation for how little is understood. For instance, take the connection between the length of time in the coma-like state, Post Traumatic Amnesia, and the severity of a brain injury. I've previously had this link presented to me as being reasonably strong, but the article now on the right hand side of this blog, Debunking Ten Myths of Brain Injury Recovery, underlined that recent research refutes there being any strong link.

I certainly do not deny that there are and will continue to be heart-wrenching stories of TBI recoverees very affected by their injury. Nor do I deny that TBI recovery is a long, hard road. Rather, I say all this because, if you or someone you love has just had a TBI, it is very likely that there is nothing that can rule out a strong recovery. The game is still wide open!

If the game is that way, what can anyone do to recover well, what can help them win their game? The answer seems to me to be, start by having the right attitude. Believing that you can't recover further is very likely to make it so. Believing that you can recover is the start to making a good comeback and that is what I wish for you!

Cheers,
Mike

Have Hope!

One of the first things I want to write about here is how long recoveries from TBI take. And, therefore, how important it is to have hope. The brain is an incredibly complex piece of equipment that, when it works well, performs a massive number of functions seamlessly. When it stops working well, we suddenly discover the amount it normally does without us even thinking.


This is me, only a few hours after my accident! A severe TBI is a pretty good way of stopping the brain working well. :-)

As well as my accident, I picked up a pneumonia in hospital that also came close to ending it all for me. It's fair to say, the odds were stacked against me! But, as a garden-loving relative jokingly said to me, it takes more to kill off a weed than that! :-)

When it comes to TBI, we can rely on another activity of the brain - recovering! And, in many cases, the brain will do a good job of that as well - all it needs is a little time!


Here's me and my Dad on my birthday almost three weeks later! The balloons are because no flowers are allowed in hospital.

For me, it did indeed need a good chunk of time. I was in the coma-like state called Post Traumatic Amnesia for a total of 56 days. This photo shows the blank, vacant stare of someone in PTA. At least I'd managed a thumbs-up and a 'kind-of' smile! I'm so thin too! I dropped 20% of my body weight following my accident! Also, you can see my tracheostomy in my neck and my gastric feeding tube in my stomach.



But slowly I came back to the world...


... just in time for a good cup of coffee! :-)

Still, my recovery was far from over - you can see I'm in a wheelchair in the previous photo. I had to relearn almost every muscular function - all the way from swallowing up through to walking and finally to running. I'm still learning to do the latter properly now - almost three years after my accident!

I finally walked again unaided on my own Independence Day, 4th July 2005 - about 4.5 months after my accident. Still, my walking was far from perfect and there was a lot of room for improvement! Here I am shakily demonstrating my newfound ability to walk to my brother almost two weeks later:



My recovery has been a long road with many ups and many downs - if you want, have a read of My Regrets. In the end, though, I'm pretty happy with the way I've recovered. I do, however, want to make one thing clear - it is a long road and the end can be very different from the start. So, if you or someone close to you is also recovering from a TBI, have hope!


Time for a proper grin! Hangliding over Rio de Janeiro a little under two years after the accident.

In some ways, my recovery was as a pretty short one. I once spoke with another TBI recoveree who lost his sense of smell following his accident. It came back, all of a sudden, fully nine years later! There is no question of the brain's ability to repair itself given a bit of luck and the right amount of time.

But there is much that can be done while we wait for things like that to happen. And I look forward to talking to you about some of that stuff on this blog.

Cheers,
Mike