Stories of recovery from head injury?

[JessieMcJessie]

My 40 year old brother fell from a height in a workplace accident three weeks ago. He was lucky to survive but has suffered a spinal cord injury, multiple spinal fractures, skull fractures and bruising to the brain. He didn’t have to have an operation on his brain and has now been moved out of ICU to a general ward.
We were so grateful to see him wake up but a week later he still can’t take in that he had an accident, doesn’t know his address and is being very angry about how uncomfortable he is. He has no short term memory but does recognise his wife and me and other people from pictures, and remembers things like his wife being a notoriously bad driver. He can’t really converse, and only sometimes answers questions. So he’s there but not there, IYSWIM. He needs spinal rehab but the spinal unit won’t take him till his cognitive ability improves and now we’re just in limbo with him lying in a hospital bed angry and confused.

The doctors were really good when he was in ICU but nobody seems to be interested in telling us anything now and we have no idea if he is ever going to regain anything approaching normal cognitive ability. I called the Headway (Brain injury charity) helpline today but nobody was available.

Can anyone with experience of head injury tell us how you or your relative progressed towards recovery?

Nobody?

Oh gosh, that's so awful for him and you all.

My daughter's teacher many years ago was in a RTA and suffered a head injury. At first she didn't know her own husband. It took many months but she made a full recovery and went back to teaching part-time after 18 months and had a baby the following year.

She had a happy ending - but it was a long and slow road at times.

Thanks WhatLiney.

Hello Jessie

My relative had a very serious head injury, 3 weeks in an induced coma then a long time in rehab. The one thing I wanted was the answer to "will he be ok?" but none of the doctors could ever give me an answer. It was incredibly frustrating.

2 years on from the injury my relative is almost miraculously better, but I know that this is very fortunate and he dodged a bullet. A second relative had a severe brain bleed and 2 1/2 years on there are still significant impairments - although again there has been a good improvement. Both people had a long and difficult rehab, so I would say any significant injury takes a long time to improve, although progress varies wildly and the patient needs to work very hard in rehab once out of hospital.

My thoughts are with you, it was an awful time.

I don’t know how you go about getting him into one but there are brain injury rehabilitation units.
It’s difficult to know how a person will progress, some can make an almost full recovery, for others they are never anywhere near the same again.

My husband suffered multiple skull fractures, and brain damage a few months back,
He has now fully recovered but still suffers from headaches from time to time,
1 week is still very very early days, take it one day at a time and focus on the small improvements that can be seen, the brain will need time to heal,
Feel free to ask me question if you need to.

Sorry, just saw it was 3 weeks ago, still very early days, it took DH 2 months to be back to normal.

my df was in a bad rta and ended up in a coma for a few days.he is fine now - had bruising and swelling of the brain and fractured skull but no op.tbh a lot of the recovery is wait and see.the hospital told us they really don't know how his recovery would go - i imagine with other injuries in addition it is probably harder to predict too.

hope all goes well.keep talking to him i found that helped my dad a lot.he would respond to familiar voices.he has no memory at all of the accident even now 25 years on.

best wishes x

oh yes - recovery takes months.rest is very important.

Sorry for all your experiences. There is talk of moving him to a rehab centre and he’s being assessed on Monday but precious little info about whether it is one dedicated to brain injury. I am hoping we will get a specialist doctor to advise us soon but it is almost like the hospital has forgotten they need to include us in decisions- we only know about the planned move because I asked the nurses what was going on. Things are of course complicated by the fact that he can’t move his legs.
I have read up a bit and see that it is normal to have a period of inability to form short term memories, confusion and aggression/frustration, but that people do usually emerge from it eventually. No doctor has seen fit to tell us this.

He keeps telling us to stop talking rubbish and leave him alone, rolls his eyes like a surly teenager and tells us to change the subject and he doesn’t care. It would be funny if it wasn’t so awful.

Sorry for what has happened to your brother
5 years ago my brother suffered a fractured skull in an assualt, had a bleed on the brain and an emergency operation
He is now fully recovered, apart from headaches and an aversion to loud noise ( which doesn't stop him from going to gigs)

At first he was very confused and very angry and had no recollection of the incident. I had to tell him it was one of his friends that assaulted him, and another of his friends who suffered a broken collarbone. I still remember him crying
He had a lot of time off work to recover but is now back working full time
He was distraught when he couldn't drive for over a year but his employer was brilliant and sorted transport for him
It was a slow and steady recovery for him but he is back to normal now, which is unbelievable because he so very nearly died
I hope your brother makes a full recovery too

Thanks insancerre. When you say your brother was very confused “at first” how long did the confusion last-hours, days, weeks?
Glad to hear he recovered so well. Did the assaulter get convicted?

When he woke up from the coma he didn't know what was happening but it only lasted a few days, thankfully
He still doesn't remember anything about what happened to

The assailant was out on bail for a previous assault, he but his neighbour with a piece of wood studded with nails
But he wasn't prosecuted
Despite complaining to the police and the local mp

Sorry that the assailant didn’t face justice insancerre.

From a brain point of view time is probably the best healer (along with a family that know him well and can remind him of his pre-injury life). The spinal unit's decision to not take him until his cognition has improved is probably because they won't be able to make progress with spinal rehab until he's able to actively focus on the work fairly normally. They won't want to just admit him and wait for his brain to improve because in that time someone else could be getting their much needed rehab.

Re your concerns about the lack of doctor input now he's off ICU - once the acute phase of a big injury like his is over there's really not so much for the doctors to do. Physio/rehab/OT/psychology becomes much more important. He will quite likely have a case co-ordinator - perhaps it's worth trying to find out who that is and make contact with them.

It may feel like he's not making much progress but really, to be as good as he is so soon after spending a week unconscious (if I've read your post correctly) is impressive. Unfortunately he (and you) are in for a long ride.

It is completely normal for him to ask you to stop talking or making noise, my husband was the same.

If it was a leg injury, you wouldn't ask him to get up and walk, for a head and brain injury, his brain needs a rest to heal so even trying to have a small conversation can be a massive effort to him which causes pain.

It is hard to see him get angry and asking you to keep quiet, but things will get better.

And I remember how frustrating it was when the doctors answers to our questions were constantly,
"We are just observing for now"

Thanks walkingthroughawall, I am guessing you are a healthcare professional of some sort? To be clear we fully understand why the spinal unit won’t take him yet. Regarding the doctors it’s not so much that they aren’t doing anything, it’s that nobody has explained to us why they aren’t doing anything and if he does have a case co-ordinator would it not be normal for the family to be told this unprompted rather than having to go and find it out? I should add that my SIL is there every day and she is a hospital pharmacist herself (in a different hospital) yet even she with her inside knowledge of the system is feeling like communication is lacking. That said she is also emotionally drained, physically tired and is not a forthright person at the best of times. I am, but I live at the other end of the country and can only fly up a couple of days a week, often at weekend when fewer staff are around.

Anyway this thread was not started to moan about the medical staff, they saved his life and until the last week or so they have been incredible and very compassionate. We know really that we are just generally shocked and angry and so complaining about the system is an outlet of sorts.

Thanks Caillou. How long did it take for your DH to stop being confused (eg not knowing his address and saying things like “I’m just going to go and get the car”) and regain any sort of short term memory?

I'm not sure about all the ins and outs of head injury, but I do have experience of spinal injury/ rehab. Please please make sure the general hospital is dealing with this, particularly with regard to not letting pressure sores develop. It seems too common that in the acute phase following spinal injury that these things aren't looked after properly.
I hope your brother makes a good recovery. It is early days. If you want to pm me about anything, feel free as I might be able to help.

Dh was ok for the first 2 days (adrenaline still there) and then he deteriorated for about 2 weeks, and then back to sort of normal, but I think it all depends on how severe the injuries are,

Thanks allthebubbles I may well PM you at some point. He is being moved frequently at the moment and one advantage of where he currently is is that it is right next to the national spinal injuries centre for Scotland so they are I think more used to having spinal patients than some hospitals might be. But may not be the case when he moves to the brain injury rehab so we’ll make sure that they have a good plan in place for the spinal side of things too, I guess that balancing the needs of the two different injuries is always going to be tricky.

No personal experience, but it might be helpful to think about Richard Hammond (Top Gear presenter) who suffered a very serious head injury in 2006 and was in a coma for weeks. However, he has made an excellent recovery - but it took several years to get there. It's still very early days for your brother but recovery is possible.

@Jessie, yes I'm an HCP. Wasn't taking it as a moan. Was just trying to add what I thought might be going on from your description based on my experience.

Re the co-ordinating bit - am not sure if things may be different in Scotland. If they haven't mentioned it already they may not have someone in that role yet (as it is still early days), but it is worth your SIL asking. The ward nurses will probably know more about progress with the rehab placement than the doctors as they're often the ones co-ordinating any visits/paperwork and things that need to happen.

Re. the doctors explaining why they're not doing anything - I guess sometimes it might not occur to us to explain that we're not doing anything because nothing needs doing, and unless someone (like a patient's family) asks why nothing's going on we won't know that you think something should be being done. Hopefully the physios and other teams may have more to tell your SIL as things progress though. It's also a big step down in terms of activity between the ICU and the ward and I know a lot of families do feel a bit neglected after a period on ICU.

Hope things do start improving for you all soon and hope you're remembering to take time to look after yourselves as, as you've said, this is completely draining to go through.