What's it llike living with a TBI

Hello again from Kingman, Arizona! tonight I will be talking about what it is like to live with a Traumatic Brain Injury. My daughter who is 14 years old now survived a severe Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) at the age of 2 when we hit by a semi truck on the freeway coming back from Vancouver, Washington on May 28, 1996, which just happened to be Memorial Day. What a Memorial Day to remember don't you think?
Severe TB I's will leave someone in a coma usually. That is what happened to her it left her in a coma for 4 days. She had to learn everything over again right down to learning how to swallow. That just goes to show the severity of the brain injury. How brain injury works is it is much better (if there is a better brain injury) for an older person to sustain a brain injury because of the fact that a person that has more age has learned more. A younger person has not learned very much in their life time and to disrupt the neuron's and blood flow to the brain can be very detrimental leaving the child with life long cognitive deficits. This is what has happened to my daughter she has life long cognitive deficits. If you don't know what cognitive means it means thinking.
So what are the challenges that a person is going to deal with later as the time passes? This is what we deal with at my house with my daughter. There are times when things are going great. I should say that is when she gets her own way and we don't ask her to do anything. She has quite a few challenges. It is very challenging for her to clean her room for example because it is very overwhelming to her because there are things all over the place and she just doesn't know where to begin so there is a plan that we use that is better...We have marked all of her drawers with names of the clothing that goes in those drawers it makes it a lot easier for her to keep organized. If you do not keep a lot of nick nack's in the the bedroom that is also a lot easier for a child that has survived a brain injury.
SOME STRATEGIES FOR A CHILD THAT SURVIVED A TBI
1. When the child is in the hospital apply for Social Security Disability because I am sure that he or she will qualify with all of the medical records that you will have obtained.
2. Immediately apply for DDD this will give you a lot of extra help in the house like respite services. If you wait until your child is older it is harder to get it is a lot easier to become approved for this service when the child is younger.
3. Get you child involved in Early Intervention this is a great service that will help with all different types of therapies and a lot of times they will come to your home for the therapies.
4. Get the child involved in activities they need to make as many friends as possible because as they get older for some reason people with brain injuries have a hard time keeping friends. This is a proven fact, why we don't know but it just happens so the more friends that you can get them when they are younger the better.
5. Keep things organized at your home because disorganization is going to be very confusing to the person with the brain injury. He or she will not remember where things belong if you are constantly putting them in different places.
6. Try to avoid "Meltdowns" but if you have them (which you will this is for sure) just try to remain calm because they will pass. Just do not give the child what he or she wants because this is not the right thing to do you still have to be a parent. There are times when my daughter will start crying like she is 2 years old because she wants a friend to stay the night and I just will not give in. Trust me it can last an hour or two also.
7. If you ever need any help you can feel free to email me at anytime at steph_meza@msn.com for any questions like I said I have been dealing with this for 12 years and I am sure that I could help with something.
I hope that these things help you with your child that has a Traumatic Brain Injury. TBI can be very hard to deal with sometimes and I am sure that it is even harder for the child that has survived the injury because they have been left disabled without friends and the only person that is left in their lives is their Mom & Dad so whatever you do please stick by them and be as strong as possible. Become as knowledgeable as possible about TBI that is your ticket to success with this disability because there are not 2 injuries that are identical.

Thank you for stopping by to read.
Steph