Brain Injury Types

My post as promised here is my blog telling you about the different types of brain injuries. Also, what can cause them and the different levels of brain injuries as well. After I will explain some of the issues, I had that confused me after my accident and finally got my doctor thinking I might have a brain injury.

The first brain injury type is called an Acquired Brain Injury, (ABI). They have many different causes such as internal factors like a loss of oxygen, toxin exposure or pressure from a brain tumor, which damages the brain, stroke, aneurysm, almost drowning and last infectious diseases.

The second is Traumatic Brain Injuries, (TBI). This is the one I have. The causes for this one is caused by external forces that affect the brain’s function. These have common causes and uncommon causes. The common ones are car accidents, falls, physical assaults, and sports related accidents like a concussion. More uncommon ones are Edema, Diffuse axonal injury, Hematoma, or a skull fracture.

The different levels of a brain injury are classified as Mild traumatic brain injury, Moderate brain injury and Severe brain injuries. I was classified as having a Mild traumatic brain injury. People that are in this category sometimes fall through the cracks. They don’t get diagnosed properly and get very little help. The reason is that their injury is sometimes so tiny it can’t even be seen on a Cat Scan or MRI. The only way to get properly diagnosed is taking a neuropsychological test. Even then you can still get misdiagnosed. Especially if you are dealing with Insurance Doctors. I had to fight for 8 years to get my diagnose and the only one that proved it beyond a shadow of doubt was the one doctor paid by OHIP. Not the Insurance Doctor or the one paid by my lawyer.

After my car accident I was in ICU, and then sent home. I didn’t move from a couch for almost 3 months. Then I went back to work, and started to notice weird things, and these were the issues that got my doctor to start and think there could be a problem.

My memory was not working well. I’d forget visits with my grandpa, or what I was doing. Also, I wrote a lot of things for my job, and I would write words into other words, and it was confusing. Costumers that I knew like the back of my hand I might forget their name, or phone number. I used to be able to memorize anyone’s phone number, and before the accident, I still remember what my kindergarten’s bully look liked. She bullied me most of my life. Mind you at one time I became a bully too. It was a bad cycle.

I also started to realize I couldn’t read books like I used to, nor could I see numbers properly. I would get them mixed up. Then I also started to stutter. It was confusing. I did get speech therapy when I was a child for an accent I got from my mother. She is French Canadian first; my dad is English Canadian. I still have a bit of an accent occasionally but its not as bad as it used to be. Stuttering was confusing. Now I am not sure of the order of these things, but they are what happened right after the accident. Also, I would get such an extensive pain in my head to the point I would drop to the ground and punch it to get rid of the pain in my head. Not a good solution but one I did from pure instinct.

The thing that had my doctor thinking I had a brain injury was me getting lost for 2 hours and walking around in circles trying to get home. I got help for the issues reading, which is good. I read a lot. By a lot I mean I had read all 80 books of Agatha Christie, and many more. I was a fast reader. Was reading romance novels by the time I was 6 or 7. Not good for a child, but those were the only adult ones in the house other than repair books, and Natural Geographic and Readers digest ones. Read those when I was older and anything I could find at the library, the bookstores, etc. Most of my childhood I would escape into books or play outside. So, this unable to read right got me very upset. As well as stuttering. The memory thing didn’t bother me until way later. Organization skills were always bad but got even worse after the accident. I did get a lot of help from Hamilton Health Sciences for the rehab of the issues with my brain.

Then I tried to paint. I couldn’t paint right. That destroyed me and hurt me so much. I had lost what I knew. I didn’t ask for help with that. I was beyond help or so I thought. I also had, and still have issues with my arm. It hurts, but I am unsure if it’s because of the issues with the nodes in my neck or wires crossed in my brain. I never got help for the nodes either. I do not feel pain right. I laugh if I get my teeth drilled. Why, because to me it’s tickling me. Not at all painful. Something is really crossed there.

At one time they thought I needed my appendix out, turns out it was my bladder that was the issue. Pain in the wrong area and not what I was supposed to feel. They took my appendix out so that won’t happen again.

Here is an example of what I used to paint like. This is from when I was 17 or 18. Everyone in art class thought I would get an A. I got a C-. Don’t think the teacher liked me much. Or the other student who had a scholarship for art school. She made him drop out and he lost the scholarship.

Please look at bottom.

This what I painted after the accident that caused me to feel like something was very wrong.

Please look at bottom.

As you can see it’s not quite what I was used to painting. I had to do the rehab on this myself

First, I would go into pottery because I could create lovely things, then I went into glass fusing, beadwork, and then wood burning. I also learned how to knit. I could not understand crochet and messed that up. Wood burning helped get my hand steadier and helped me to remember how to draw. It would take close to ten years before I painted again. Wood burning and drawing were what I did maybe one to three years later. I can’t remember. Here are some of the things I created.

Please look at bottom.

It was a long journey, and I will write about the different steps I did to get back there. As well as emotions and feelings that I felt at times. I hope you stay with me and enjoy the ride. Thank you for listening and learning about brain injuries. I hope the more people who learn about them can be more understanding to those that have them, and stop telling people that they don't have a brain injury. That can be hurtful and make their mental health and happiness worse by refusing to believe your loved ones. They are not faking it, these things happen to them. The issues confuse them, change them, hurt them and they have to work on them constantly as they are always happening. Adding stress to them, telling them it's not real is not helpful.