Traumatic Brain Injury Quotes

My Miracle, living through a Traumatic brain Injury

The symptoms of intense grief—memory loss, attention deficit, emotional fragility, incapacitating fatigue—are surprisingly similar to those resulting from traumatic brain injury.

We both laugh. I like the sound of my mother’s laugh. I wish she’d found these pills when I was a kid, that I wasn’t learning the sound of my mother’s laughter at the age of thirty-seven and at the price of a traumatic brain injury. I look over at her pillbox. It suddenly occurs to me that she took many more pills than should be prescribed solely for depression. What else could she be taking medication for? I wonder.

Whatever I have to do here, I’m ready for it. Work hard, do my homework, get an A, get back home to Bob and the kids, and back to work. Back to normal. I’m determined to recover 100 percent. One hundred percent has always been my goal in everything, unless extra credit is involved, and then I shoot higher. Thank God I’m a competitive, type A perfectionist. I’m convinced I’m going to be the best traumatic brain injury patient Baldwin has ever seen. But they won’t be seeing me for very long because I also plan to recover faster than anyone here would predict. I wonder what the record is.

In my practice I use neurofeedback primarily to help with the hyperarousal, confusion, and concentration problems of people who suffer from developmental trauma. However, it has also shown good results for numerous issues and conditions that go beyond the scope of this book, including relieving tension headaches, improving cognitive functioning following a traumatic brain injury, reducing anxiety and panic attacks, learning to deepen meditation states, treating autism, improving seizure control, self-regulation in mood disorders, and more.

To my mind, every emergency room should have a low-intensity laser for people with stroke or head trauma. This therapy would be especially important for head injuries, because there is no effective drug therapy for traumatic brain injury. Uri Oron has also shown that low-intensity laser light can reduce scar formation in animals that have had heart attacks; perhaps lasers should be used in emergency rooms for cardiac

Some researchers have theorized that shutting off certain left-brain activities somehow liberates right-brain skills that had been latent all along. Indeed, people have been known to suddenly acquire savantlike abilities later in life, after a traumatic injury to the left side of the brain.

It seems like it might go on for a while, so Tausolo takes a seat and looks around the sergeant's cubicle. There's not much to see, since the guy just arrived at the WTB, only a blank form tacked to a wall that looks like every other army form in the world. "Hurt Feelings Report," it is titled. "Whiner's name," it says under that. "Which ear were the words of hurtfulness spoken into?" it says under that. "Is there permanent feeling damage?" "Did you require a 'tissue' for tears?" "Has this resulted in a traumatic brain injury?" "Reason for filing this report," it says under that. "Mark all that apply." "I am a wimp." "I am a crybaby." "I want my mommy." "I was told that I am not a hero." "Narrative," it says under that. "Tell us in your own sissy words how your feelings were hurt." Finally at the bottom of the form: We, as the Army, take hurt feelings seriously. If you don't have someone who can give you a hug and make things all better, please let us know and we will promptly dispatch a "hugger" to you ASAP. In the event we are unable to find a "hugger" we will notify the fire department and request that they send fire personnel to your location. If you are in need of supplemental support, upon written request, we will make every reasonable effort to provide you with a "blankey," a "binky" and/or a bottle if you so desire.

After Michael Fanone’s partner rushed him to the emergency room following his ordeal, Fanone was diagnosed with a heart attack, a concussion, and a traumatic brain injury. Daniel Hodges’ wounds included a concussion and multiple contusions. Harry Dunn suffered emotional trauma that required extensive counseling. The psychological damage inflicted on officers who were forced to battle their fellow citizens at the Capitol might linger the longest and for some, hurt the most, even if it’s the least visible. Two officers who defended the Capitol committed suicide shortly afterwards. Numerous officers, traumatized by the events of January 6th, have left the force. It’s impossible to know how many who remain on the job still suffer from trauma’s after-effects.

The concept of “brain plasticity” refers to the ongoing capacity of the brain and the nervous system to change itself. Everything that we do, think, feel, and experience changes our brain. A stroke or a traumatic brain injury can affect brain plasticity, and plasticity may also be associated with such developmental disorders as autism. Increased brain plasticity may also potentially endow a person with unanticipated new abilities, as John appears to have experienced in this book. TMS, or transcranial magnetic stimulation, the intervention that John undergoes, provides a unique opportunity for us to learn about the mechanisms of plasticity, and to identify alterations in the brain’s networks that may be responsible for a patient’s problematic symptoms, and also for recovery.

Those of us who have so-called normal lives without undue stress and fear and worry and pain rarely know how fortunate we are. Then we see a man like Adam who’s famous even if unemployed and who lives at his sister’s house and struggles to manage, and we’re tempted to think he should snap out of it. He’s obviously intelligent, and he has no apparent disabilities. So we think, you’re smart, go out and get a job, and make yourself a normal life. Then we learn that the man has Traumatic Brain Injury and medical issues that can rip normalcy in two, and we realize that one of the main problems is in ourselves for failing to consider that not all other people have our good fortune of functioning bodies and brains, with emotional and psychological landscapes that are level and fertile and stable and predictable.

When I first met concussion specialist Dr. Michael Collins, after three and a half years of suffering from post-concussive syndrome, he said, “If you remember only one thing from this meeting, remember this: run towards the danger.” In order for my brain to recover from a traumatic injury, I had to retrain it to strength by charging towards the very activities that triggered my symptoms. This was a paradigm shift for me—to greet and welcome the things I had previously avoided.

When applied to the prefrontal lobes, TMS has been shown to enhance the speed and agility of cognitive processing. The TMS bursts are like a localized jolt of caffeine, but nobody knows for sure how the magnets actually do their work.” These experiments hint, but by no means prove, that silencing a part of the left frontotemporal region could initiate some enhanced skills. These skills are a far cry from savant abilities, and we should also be careful to point out that other groups have looked into these experiments, and the results have been inconclusive. More experimental work must be done, so it is still too early to render a final judgment one way or the other. TMS probes are the easiest and most convenient instrument to use for this purpose, since they can selectively silence various parts of the brain at will without relying on brain damage and traumatic accidents. But it should also be noted that TMS probes are still crude, silencing millions of neurons at a time. Magnetic fields, unlike electrical probes, are not precise but spread out over several centimeters. We know that the left anterior temporal and orbitofrontal cortices are damaged in savants and likely responsible, at least in some part, for their unique abilities, but perhaps the specific area that must be dampened is an even smaller subregion. So each jolt of TMS might inadvertently deactivate some of the areas that need to remain intact in order to produce savantlike skills. In the future, with TMS probes we might be able to narrow down the region of the brain involved with eliciting savant skills. Once this region is identified, the next step would be to use highly accurate electrical probes, like those used in deep brain stimulation, to dampen these areas even more precisely. Then, with the push of a button, it might be possible to use these probes to silence this tiny portion of the brain in order to bring out savantlike skills. FORGETTING TO FORGET AND PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY Although savant skills may be initiated by some sort of injury to the left brain (leading to right brain compensation), this still does not explain precisely how the right brain can perform these miraculous feats of memory. By what neural mechanism does photographic memory emerge? The answer to this question may determine whether we can become savants. Until recently, it was thought that photographic memory was due to the special ability of certain brains to remember. If so, then it might be difficult for the average person to learn these memory skills, since only exceptional brains are capable of them. But in 2012, a new study showed that precisely the opposite may be true. The key to photographic memory may not be the ability of remarkable brains to learn; on the contrary, it may be their inability to forget. If this is true, then perhaps photographic memory is not such a mysterious thing after all.

Just because you can’t see my injury doesn’t mean I don’t have one. Traumatic Brain Injuries take many forms, from the person who lives their life with few problems to those who live in a vegetative state. I’m thankful that my accident didn’t take my ability to walk and talk.  I pray for those whose injury is more severe than mine.  Still, my brain injury has taken a lot from me and I live with its affects everyday.

Nearly half of all homeless people have a history of traumatic brain injury. I used to think that this was because of the rough life they encountered on the streets, but I learned that almost all of the initial injuries occurred before they became homeless.

Just as the discoveries of medication and surgery led to therapies to relieve a staggering number of conditions, so does the discovery of neuroplasticity. The reader will find cases, many very detailed, that may be relevant to someone who has, or cares for someone who has experienced, chronic pain, stroke, traumatic brain injury, brain damage, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, autism, attention deficit disorder, a learning disorder (including dyslexia), a sensory processing disorder, a developmental delay, a part of the brain missing, Down syndrome, or certain kinds of blindness, among others.

It is at times like these that I have a powerful perceptual shift about luck and fate and the chaotic randomness of life. Those of us who have so-called normal lives without undue stress and fear and worry and pain rarely know how fortunate we are. Then we see a man like Adam who’s famous even if unemployed and who lives at his sister’s house and struggles to manage, and we’re tempted to think he should snap out of it. He’s obviously intelligent, and he has no apparent disabilities. So we think, you’re smart, go out and get a job, and make yourself a normal life. Then we learn that the man has Traumatic Brain Injury and medical issues that can rip normalcy in two, and we realize that one of the main problems is in ourselves for failing to consider that not all other people have our good fortune of functioning bodies and brains, with emotional and psychological landscapes that are level and fertile and stable and predictable.

There’s a great need. More than forty thousand soldiers have been injured overseas, with three-quarters of those having life-threatening or life-changing injuries. And here’s something staggering. Nearly 20 percent of soldiers who’ve seen combat in the Middle East have sustained what could be classified a traumatic brain injury. An estimated 30 percent of returning soldiers have psychological or post-traumatic stress issues.

THE SECOND SPEAKER, ANITA SALTMARCHE, focused specifically on studies of light therapy used for traumatic brain injury, stroke, and depression.

Dr. Margaret Naeser and colleagues from Harvard, MIT, and Boston University, including Harvard professor Michael Hamblin, a world leader in understanding how light therapy works at the cellular level. Hamblin, at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Wellman Center for Photomedicine, specializes in the use of light to activate the immune system in treating cancer and cardiac disease; he was now branching out into its use for brain injuries. Building on lab work that applied laser therapy to the top of the head (transcranial laser therapy), the Boston group had studied its use in traumatic brain injury and found laser treatment helpful. Naeser, a research professor at the Boston University School of Medicine, had done studies using lasers for stroke and paralysis and was one of several pioneers using “laser acupuncture” by placing light on acupuncture points.

A team from Sydney, Australia, has lowered levels of these proteins using light. They implanted human genes associated with Alzheimer’s into mouse DNA, so that the animals developed abnormal tau proteins and amyloid plaques. Then they treated them for a month with low-level light therapy, simply by holding the light one to two centimeters above the animals’ heads. Using the same spectrum of near-infrared light that has helped in traumatic brain injury, Parkinson’s disease, and retinal damage, they lowered both the pathological tau proteins and the amyloid plaques by 70 percent in key brain areas that Alzheimer’s affects. Thereafter signs of “rusting” decreased, and the mitochondria, the powerhouses of the cells, improved their function.

Improving Traumatic Brain Injury (tbi), or concussion, Outcomes/Treatment: We are really excited about this. A blow to the head leads to an energy crisis in the brain, so the brain starts taking in as much glucose as it can. The more glucose available, the more the brain takes in. But just like the rest of our body, the brain becomes insulin resistant and inflamed. The inflamed brain isn’t able to get nutrients, making it a starving and inflamed brain. Not a good combo, and one that leads to a nasty progressive cascade. But animal research on concussion (yeah, it’s not pretty research) has found that following a concussion, ketones can be taken up instead of glucose which could prevent the rapid uptake of glucose, could still solve the energy crisis in the brain, and provide antioxidant benefits in the brain.61 Ketones should be on the sidelines at football games, not Gatorade—especially since there is evidence that ketones could be good in both the short-term and long-term treatment of tbi.62 Cancer: This will take another

under the guise of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and to microchip human brains. Direct from DARPA’s website, we read about their Restoring Active Memory (RAM) program:

Tying learning to music is so powerful that it has been harnessed as a tool for a variety of therapies. There are some incredible success stories with military veterans with traumatic brain injury, stroke victims, and people with autism.

Once, while recovering from a traumatic brain injury, he had received a revelation from God charging him with a singular mission: to do exactly what he would have done anyway, only more of it.

At Bethesda Naval Medical Center, Biggles was still in a medically induced coma. Just two days had passed since he suffered a traumatic brain injury and extensive damage to his eyes and face. When I walked into his room for the first time, I didn’t know what to expect. I guess I was a little shocked by what I saw. Biggles’s eyes were swollen up to the size of purple golf balls on a patchwork of pink, black, and blue skin. It didn’t feel right. As we stood around his bed in our civvies, Biggles had no idea we were there. The whole scene made us uneasy. He had tubes protruding from his mouth and one from his head to relieve the pressure. He wasn’t the same Biggles I saw on patrol headed down Baseline—now placid with unconsciousness and badly wounded. None of us could say much of anything until I finally muttered, “Be strong, Biggles. We’ll be back to see you soon, brother.

In 2005, according to the CDC, eleven Americans died of all food allergies—that is, adults as well as children, and from an allergy to any food, not just peanuts. Yet schools across America have banned peanuts and peanut butter, among the few protein-rich foods many children like to eat. Compare this with about ten thousand children who are hospitalized each year for sports-related traumatic brain injuries. The hysteria has been led by school officials, the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, and Consumer Reports, a liberal magazine that helped stoke the hysteria about secondhand smoke. It is mind-boggling that schools have banned peanut butter. But in the Age of Hysteria, one child who might die suffices to ban a food for the millions of students who would benefit from it.

Where was I when all this was happening?" "You took a nasty bump on the head. You were out for the whole thing." "Out, like passed out? Vampires don't pass out." "The ones with traumatic brain injuries do." Frankie’s eyes went wide. "Really? I had a traumatic brain injury? And I’m not a vegetable. Extraordinary." I wiped my blood stained hands on my ass. "Frankie, we lost Mia. I just executed three of Leila's human henchmen. My jeans are ruined. And I need a goddamn drink. What the hell is so extraordinary about your brain injury?

Despite the huge numbers of people suffering head injuries every year and the staggering costs associated, research into traumatic brain injury has been chronically underfunded.

In the most dismal place, at the longest point of night - just before sunrise - the morning star shines its glimmer of hope.

The classification of super-recognizers emerged from an entirely different field of research: a clinical psychology experiment which was studying the opposite end of the spectrum: prosopagnosia. This is a clinical condition, sometimes described as face blindness, where people have extreme difficulty identifying faces. It can be enormously debilitating. A parent may not be able to pick their child up from school because they cannot recognize their offspring. Some sufferers cannot even recognize their own face on being shown a photograph of themselves. Prosopagnosia is an inherited condition; it can also be acquired through stroke or traumatic brain injury. You can take a quiz online to see where you lie on the prosopagnosia–super-recognizer spectrum. Most of us will be somewhere in the middle, with the vast majority proving better at recognizing their husband than I am.

Without warning, something struck me in the head. It felt like a railroad tie had been driven through the top of my head, into my skull, and out my left eye socket. The pain was excruciating, as if a bowling ball had fallen on my head, and shuddered through my whole body.

Later, I learned a golfer was hitting from the ninth tee with his comrades. He had been drinking a few beers and thought he could drive the green. His aim was dangerously off, and he managed to hit the golf ball over the clubhouse, a mere 200 yards away. To my misfortune, it struck me on the head with the force of something much larger. My young, vibrant, and motivated life, as I knew it, changed in an instant.

Simple tasks became monumental nightmares. A short trip to vote turned into a long, nerve-wracking experience. The voting booths were conveniently located just around the block from my house. I jumped into the car, and I was suddenly overcome with dizziness when I tried to look left and right. I kept driving, thinking I would get there shortly. But something went wrong. Much time passed, and I had no clue where I was. It was now dark outside, and I was lost. I caught a whiff of ocean water, which was at least a half-hour away from my home. Frightened and confused, I pulled over and cried.

Woman of Mother Earth Oh, what is this I’m feeling, Mother Earth beneath my feet . . . Endless roots journey, through fresh rich soil, grounded and strong. Forever reaching, forever pulsing out the beat. A voice of a thousand mothers in synchronicity. Let yourself be seeded in the womb, belly of heart and soul, And all that is grown, the richest gift ever known. Wisdom of the land, nurtured by hand, Are the women who give birth, to the children of the Earth. Plants and trees and flowers and seeds Breathe life with energy from the sun and rain. As in me, I remain, a woman of the Earth. That is this feeling . . . I am woman of Mother Earth.

My parents were delighted that I was getting the help I needed, although I did not fully disclose the details of my living situation with them. While I was growing up, my projected role in the family was to always be the strong one. I was the mediator, or “Miss Perfect” as some family members would say, so I was usually clear on what I told them. With my traumatic brain injury, it was a bit different, so I didn’t share much of the daily happenings with my parents, except for the therapy sessions.

The mind us very resilient and very invested in your preservation. It will do what it must protect you. Many reactions to chronic abuse may seem illogical or unhelpful when we look at them with a critical eye but the brain and the body do what they have to do to survive. In an attempt to protect you from future harm, your brain and body may either develop a heightened sensitivity to threats of discrimination or they may resort to numbness. Race based traumatic stress injuries can come from direct experiences of one on one racism, but they can also be triggered by witnessing racism.

The mind is very resilient and very invested in your preservation. It will do what it must protect you. Many reactions to chronic abuse may seem illogical or unhelpful when we look at them with a critical eye but the brain and the body do what they have to do to survive. In an attempt to protect you from future harm, your brain and body may either develop a heightened sensitivity to threats of discrimination or they may resort to numbness. Race based traumatic stress injuries can come from direct experiences of one on one racism, but they can also be triggered by witnessing racism.

high blood pressure, high cholesterol, mood disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, and traumatic brain injury instead of relying only on drugs. The residents learned that diet and lifestyle are powerful treatments—often as effective, if not more so, than drugs. The patients in the traumatic brain injury clinic were also eager to learn what things they could do to speed the healing of their brains. In patient after patient, I watched symptoms and the need for drugs decrease as diet and lifestyles improved.

His injuries were too severe for him to get back in the fight, but that didn’t stop him from serving his fellow warriors. Today Mike helps veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury. He gives back to the nation every chance he can. Over the years that followed, I would run the obstacle course every chance I could, knowing that one day Mike would show up to challenge me. I needed to be ready.

In my work as a therapist I have seen hundreds of clients who struggle with these issues, and I am convinced now more than ever of one simple truth: they are not lazy. In fact, I do not think laziness exists. You know what does exist? Executive dysfunction, procrastination, feeling overwhelmed, perfectionism, trauma, amotivation, chronic pain, energy fatigue, depression, lack of skills, lack of support, and differing priorities. ADHD, autism, depression, traumatic brain injury, and bipolar and anxiety disorders are just some of the conditions that affect executive function, making planning, time management, working memory, and organization more difficult, and tasks with multiple steps intimidating or boring.

In this book we have seen how many mental health problems, from drug addiction to self-injurious behavior, start off as attempts to cope with emotions that became unbearable because of a lack of adequate human contact and support. Yet institutions that deal with traumatized children and adults all too often bypass the emotional-engagement system that is the foundation of who we are and instead focus narrowly on correcting “faulty thinking” and on suppressing unpleasant emotions and troublesome behaviors.

Many of us were taught a vision of God as Tormentor when we were small, impressionable children, and it got deposited in the lowest part of our brain stems, like all traumatic injuries do.

That’s so inspiring,” I said. “It makes me think of my father’s accident, too. He fell down a flight of stairs, almost exactly five years before he died. My dad suffered a very serious traumatic brain injury that left him delirious for over a month. We were told that he might never come back or be himself again. When he finally came back to his right mind, my brother said he was sorry my dad had endured such a traumatic experience. My dad responded, ‘Oh, no, not at all. It’s all part of my curriculum.

Andrei could not guess how long the patient had been in this condition. For all he knew, the patient might not have known that smartphones existed, who the president was, or that the pandemic had even occurred. Andrei contemplated the brother’s state—and imagined a mind sinking down an infinite well of scattered thoughts and gloom. He speculated the likely craze one would result to from being imprisoned inside a room, isolated from all things and all people for years. The man had no choice but to stare at the ceiling and listen to a machine that breathed for him. He could not taste the flavor of fruit, of beer, of cheese, or any delight to the tongue. He would not know temperature. He could not scratch himself nor could he ask to be scratched. He must have lost count of the days and not know if it was a Thursday in April or Sunday in May. If a nurse said something to him, he was forfeited the human naturality to respond. If a nurse hurt him, he could not protect himself. He had memories, but no friend to create more with.

Results have now been seen not only in elementary-school children, but in preschoolers, college students, the middle-aged, and the elderly. Healthy volunteers have benefited, as have people with disorders including Down syndrome, schizophrenia, traumatic brain injury, alcohol abuse, Parkinson’s disease, chemotherapy-treated cancer, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and mild cognitive impairment (a common forerunner of Alzheimer’s disease). Gains have been seen to persist for up to eight months after the completion of training.

More than forty thousand soldiers have been injured overseas, with three-quarters of those having life-threatening or life-changing injuries. And here’s something staggering. Nearly 20 percent of soldiers who’ve seen combat in the Middle East have sustained what could be classified a traumatic brain injury. An estimated 30 percent of returning soldiers have psychological or post-traumatic stress issues.

In 1848, the twenty-five-year-old Gage was working on a railroad bed when he was distracted by some activity behind him. As he turned his head, the large rod he was using to pack powder explosives struck a rock, caused a spark and the powder exploded. The rod flew up through his jaw, traveled behind his eye, made its way through the left-hand side of his brain and shot out the other side. Despite his somewhat miraculous survival, Gage was never the same again. The once jovial, kind young man became aggressive, rude and prone to swearing at the most inappropriate times. As a toddler, Alonzo Clemons also suffered a traumatic head injury, after falling onto the bathroom floor. Left with severe learning difficulties and a low IQ, he was unable to read or write. Yet from that day on he showed an incredible ability to sculpt. He would use whatever materials he could get his hands on—Play-Doh, soap, tar—to mold a perfect image of any animal after the briefest of glances. His condition was diagnosed as acquired savant syndrome, a rare and complex disorder in which damage to the brain appears to increase people’s talent for art, memory or music. SM, as she is known to the scientific world, has been held at gunpoint and twice threatened with a knife. Yet she has never experienced an ounce of fear. In fact, she is physically incapable of such emotion. An unusual condition called Urbach-Wiethe disease has slowly calcified her amygdalae, two almond-shaped structures deep in the center of the brain that are responsible for the human fear response. Without fear, her innate curiosity sees her approach poisonous spiders without a second’s thought. She talks to muggers with little regard for her own safety. When she comes across deadly snakes in her garden, she picks them up and throws them away.

We need to help inspire an increasingly “one-minded” approach to not only mental illness and addiction but brain diseases from autism to Alzheimer’s, bipolar disorder to traumatic brain injury, seizures to PTSD.

rapid rotation or deceleration of the brain causes stretching of these nerve cells on a cellular level, the brain’s normal transmission of signals (information) is disrupted,