First of all, what is a brain injury, whether it is traumatic or a concussion, or otherwise, what constitutes the medical definition of a brain injury?
Brain injury has two subdivisions. One is acquired and one is traumatic. Acquired would be something like a stroke. A traumatic injury is anything that is from an outside force. So if it’s a gunshot wound, hitting an object, anything from the outside versus the inside which would be MS, Parkinson’s, so that’s what’s called an acquired. Those two categories fall under of brain injury.
And what are some of the symptoms that people with brain injury will manifest typically?
Typically they will have sensitivity to light. The most common is the headaches, fatigue, they have like a brain fog. Their mood can change. They become very edgy. They as I said, their skin can be more sensitive. But for most of them, it’s the sleep disturbances. The headaches are the ones that most people complain about.
And what are some of the steps that are the road to recovery for people? Obviously that depends on the severity of the injury. A lot of veterans coming back from Iraq, Afghanistan have had traumatic brain injuries because of explosive concussion. Something like that is going to take an awful lot longer than say someone falling off a bike maybe.
Well there’s three categories if we want to talk about traumatic brain injury and they are based on the duration of time someone has been unconscious and having some form of amnesia or memory loss, either anterograde or retrograde. And so the first is barely dazed to one hour, that is called a concussion. If it’s an hour to 24 hours, it’s a moderate. If it’s between after 24 hours, it’s called in a coma. So when you saying he’s six months in a coma, that’s considered a severe traumatic brain injury. All three traumatic brain injuries all form dysregulation of neural circuitry in the brain. But how long is someone unconscious.
Now you’ve had some personal experience with this as well. You suffered both a stroke and that led to a head on automobile collision, what was your recovery process like?
Well one of the things, when there has been a brain injury that has been followed in a relatively short period of time with another injury, that’s called “second impact syndrome”. So is that, I had the stroke, passed out while driving. Had a 60 mile per hour head on and then five months later I had brain surgery and had a portion of my brain removed. So those three subsequent brain injuries, I mean, brain surgery is considered a brain injury, is that’s the second impact syndrome? And then the symptoms, the dysregulation, the swelling of the brain is now not, the symptoms are not arithmetic, it’s geometric. And so it’s not one plus one, it’s one plus three. So once you have this dysregulation in the brain and the swelling has increased. So that is what happens. So when you have repeated hits like in soccer or in football and it’s not treated and the brain does not—Then you’re starting to see what you see in CTE which is Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. Where now the actual protein comes out which is called tau, comes out and eats the brain away. That’s the extreme. In my situation it took me seven years to learn walk, talk, and recover,
What are some of the things people can do if they have suffered from a head injury of any time? Is there anything to look for as far as symptoms? And when is it time to go see the doctor?
If you had a concussion you go to the doc. That’s the first thing I would tell you. And then depending on if you’re in any kind of situation that there is a need for proof, such as in an auto accident at work or in a situation that someone may have a legal case, you must go to the hospital. You must get at least an MRI. And if you’re going to get an MRI you should get an SWI, which is single weighted. And a DTI and a cat scan will show if there is a bleed or not. But they do not show the microscopic tears that a SWI or DTI show. That’s the first.