Chapter 9.)
The middle of the road, single lane traveling.
With any story, there is a beginning, middle and then an end. Tye’s journey in recovery and healing had now entered the middle stage. There were so many happenings that occurred on the fourth floor. In reflection, the bed transfer was just an unfolding to the many shakes of the head dilemma’s that began to unwind. Life was changing for my son and nothing would ever be exactly the same again. EVER.
Day Planner Time. Let me begin with a happening on the fourth floor. The hospital staff had set up a meeting between the on call neuropsychologist and me. Previously, I had asked for a psychologist when my son was still in ICU. After the bed transfer to the fourth floor, I began asking the hospital staff the same question. All I got was the staff saying, “They had an on call doctor, but that he was hard to get, because he was so busy”. I waited and waited as the weeks went by for the arrival of the neuropsychologist to talk to me. Finally, after transporting my son to the fourth floor, I was allowed a meeting with the doctor.
I’ve always been very skeptical of mental health practitioners. However, I figured that part of my son’s healing treatments needed some sort of therapeutic counseling. I was told that a neuropsychologist would be helpful. I really needed someone with counseling experience to talk to me about the long-term physical effects my son would have to deal with in his life. I wanted the same help for him be able to come to terms with handling information and that I share with my son at a later time. My son had come a long way in his journey of recovery. He was about to enter an area that would be quite a challenge to his mind.
The neuropsychologist walked into my son’s hospital room and asked to examine him first and then he wanted to talk with me. I had to leave the room once again, while the door was closed and the doctor examined my sedated son. Within five minutes, the doctor left my son’s hospital room and had me to join him for a conversation. We walked down the hallway to another hospital room, where we sat for almost two hours having a very serious conversation about my son’s health, past life histories, as well as his future. It will be hard for me to explain my two- hour consult with a ‘neuro shrink’.
Neuropsychologists are not medical doctors in the way one would call someone holding the title of a doctor. Neuropsychologists are persons trained in the fields of psychology and psychotherapies with an emphasis on the brain functions. They are not psychiatrists either. Based on a World Wide Web internet definition, a neuropsychologist begins treatment with testing. “Neuropsychological testing is designed to determine the brain’s capacity with respect to short and long term memory, abstract reasoning, attention, concentration, executive functioning, motor skills and other cognitive and psychological factors. By comparing the pattern of these results, against the patient’s pre-morbid capabilities, and correlating these results with the nature of the trauma suffered by the patient, neuropsychologists can, to a reasonable degree of certainty, opine that individuals without an acute diagnosis of brain injury have permanent deficits as a result of brain trauma.” That’s the definition of a neuropsychologist as what I had researched. I learned not to call every psychologist ‘a shrink’; I learned neuropsychology is a specialized field of study in the mental health and medical professions. I was given a detailed diagram of my son’s brain trauma.
During Tye’s recovery, there were many doctors that asked the same life assessment review questions. Such as, what was Tye like as a young baby? Did you have a difficult birth? More questions were asked of me about Tye’s teen years and his young adult life experiences. I shared with all doctors that my son was well seasoned from the time he was about 10, and I had a pretty colorful discussion with this doctor. The whole time I sat and talked about seasons in my son’s life that were most disturbing to me, the doctor was very patient in his listening. He leaned way over and said he was most worried about me. Was I talking care of myself? Was I eating? Questions of concern about the welfare of me, was a change in pace. I appreciated the fact that this doctor didn’t write down every word I said (into a noted form), but I was able to attract his attention with a few of my long-term fears. My sister shared with me that the neuropsychologist was concerned about the vicarious stress factors from me dealing with a person that has suffered a traumatic accident and the effects of brain injury. Yes, vicarious indeed, I was in shock and trying to function in a healthy manner without showing signs of distress, or mere exhaustion.
Fears, Uncertainties and Doubts. I told the neuropsychologist that my son wasn’t a middle aged man, yet he would want everyone to be very straight forward with him. He would take the news of his friend’s death one or two ways, and there would be no middle ground. Tye would either accept the death of his friend with normal human emotions reflecting sorrow and remorse and deal with it in a mature manner or he would go the other way and not know ways to cope with the many losses. I know my son pretty well. He has a strong spirit, but the accident and fatality was the worst thing that had ever happened in his life. It wasn’t just an accident on a motorcycle where he had crashed and the bike was totaled by the insurance adjustor. The accident involved another person’s loss of life. His friend’s life ended on planet Earth the night of the accident. A great void was experienced for all concerned. In my opinion, the degrees of grief would affect my son psychologically. My concerns were how he would be told of his friend’s death and why he didn’t lose his life in the accident? How my son would handle knowing his friend died. What would he say or do first. Would I, (being the one with him so much) be the one to have to tell him and what would I say first? I thought maybe me hearing a psychologist’s point of view would help me with saying the appropriate statements to Tye when that day arrived.
The neuropsychologist took extra time and drew on a white bulletin board Tye’s brain injury. Then he went into more detailed information about what the brain does after a traumatic injury. The visual drawings helped me understand that my son had already survived the worst part of the brain injury traumas.
My son was alive, he was walking, and he was talking. The sedation was the staff’s idea of placing him under a more restrictive environment due to the fourth floor area. When Tye came down off the heavy pain meds and other drugs, he would be awake to ask questions and I knew that day was near. The Neuropsychologist said, “He (in his opinion) didn’t think that Tye would even remember his friend, based on the severe injury to his brain mostly because their shared friendship was so short lived in his life.
The doctor went on to say that my son wouldn’t remember the accident as well. In addition, the doctor said that “Tye probably wouldn’t recall the week leading up to the accident with any real degree of accuracy.” The doctor agreed that the personality that Tye had would make hearing the information a challenge only in the respect that he get a good grip on the facts and deal with them. Then he added that Tye would need me, (the caregiver), for five years. He would need help in his life with areas that now were going to be difficult.
Every area to my son’s life had suddenly changed. Tye would not be going back to his (normal) way of living. My son would not be the same Tye that I remembered. I was told he would have changes to his personality that most of us, (the family), would not understand or even care for, except that we were to be thankful that we even had him alive. By all accounts, my son never should have made it through even 10 minutes of life after hitting his head as hard as he did. The brain had taken quite a blow and it was all shook up inside, and it would be a miracle to see how Tye would gather up his memory and function, with whatever was left from this trauma, to his brain. Everyone in contact with Tye was astonished at how he was even walking around. Anyone seeing him after seeing the CAT scans, MRI’s or X-rays said they couldn’t believe he was alive. He was my walking, talking miracle and no one knew it better than I, but then no one knew the spirit inside my son either. Something was energizing him within, something was keeping him going and I still to this day believe in my heart that if I hadn’t been there every second with him, he wouldn’t have moved forward in his journey of recovery. He moved at a snail’s pace. Everyone kept saying to me, “You have such a long road ahead of you.” Everyone said the journey has just begun. I heard all these words, but it didn’t really sink in at the time, because I kept thinking Tye and I had overcome or jumped another hurdle and he was improving.
The neuropsychologist added his thoughts about Tye’s future plan, but also he said that it would take his family and me to get Tye through this difficult period. In two years, we (the family) could see at what leveling out point Tye would be and that was to be what we would see Tye at for a long time. Staff, doctors all said the same thing, if Tye was too stimulated, he would regress. If things weren’t handled well, Tye could stay in the area of regression and not move forward in a more progressive manner. People forget after an accident of what the future still holds. We all think that just because the patient is improving, that everything is up hill from then on, but what happens when it still doesn’t go up hill? Then comes the area when the patient is frustrated and the caregiver is worried that the regression has begun. My deepest concern was when Tye would be going home, what was down the road for him? He wasn’t even out of the hospital yet, he hadn’t advanced enough to even be in rehabilitation, so my future thinking would have to be on hold until that day arrived. For now, I was dealing with the every hour developments and the rotating staff.
In wrapping up the conversation with the neuropsychologist, he then said that he would see my son again and evaluate him further. Much to my disappointment, that never happened during my son’s hospital duration in eastern Colorado. Walking back into my son’s room, I watched a young man still struggling with his physical pain and my heart sank once again. Tye wanted to know where I had been for so long. I reassured him I was only two doors down from his room, talking to another doctor. I began to play a little game with Tye every time I left the room for a moment or two. I would set my purse on the table next to him and point to my purse and ask him what does that mean? At first Tye didn’t understand, and then I said, “My purse is going to stay right there until I return Tye, and remember, a Mom never goes to far away without her purse, right?” I would get a reassured look from my son and then he would say, “yeah that is right.” I would walk out into the hallway and as I walked a couple of steps I could hear my son tell the sitter, that’s right Mom’s never go anywhere without their purse, so she will be right back. The young sitter would agree and say, “your Mom sure has good ideas and she is right, she will be right back.” I would think up new ideas every week of things to calm my son down in his struggle of feeling left in a hospital room alone. He was not alone, but to a brain trauma injured patient this was an increased fear that wasn’t going to go away. The fear of closed in areas was developing in Tye, which was something he never had before the accident. Life was changing for my son, even in the hospital. Nothing would ever be exactly the exact same again. My son was living in a claustrophobic world with a halo on his head, not being able to return to his everyday living tasks and he had feelings of entrapment, while dealing with body pains and the long journey of recovery of healing mentally, spiritually and physically.
The story will continue in my next journal writings. The anger sets in with the rant and raging while traveling in the middle of the road towards recovery and healing.
