Thanks for the call at the hospital today. It made Scott feel a little special given he would have loved to be at both Bruce’s house and in Qld. But in his words, SHIT HAPPENS. He commented, ‘that was nice’, followed by ‘I’ve got a lot of people to thank’.
Given the circumstances, I’m pretty sure he was pleased to have my company. Pretty cool, eh? Having your dad feed you and hold the pee bottle for Christmas Day but hey, shit really does happen. I have got one thing to say in agreement with Scott, the hospital food is simply CRAP.
Regards,
Harris family
As it turned out, on Christmas Day I passed the evaluation and was released from the PTA. I was released from what felt to me like a well- meaning form of solitary confinement. Finally, I answered the same set of questions right, three days in a row. I could now have visitors.
Thursday, 1 January 2009
Hi all,
On behalf of Scott, I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy new year. Scott is progressing well and has now been given the go ahead to have visitors. Given this is the first step, we would like to take things gradually, i.e. two visitors at a time would be what we would like at this stage. To coordinate this to some extent, maybe you could give us a call so we can give you some idea of atime that would suit. As he progresses over coming weeks the visiting regime will loosen up a little to allow small groups of friends to visit together. At the moment he has become a little bored and would really appreciate visits from friends and family.
Scott’s speech is improving daily but is still a little slow. This is dueto numbness still around his face and mouth that limits his abilityto roll his tongue and he is still having some problems with his right arm. He can move his fingers and shoulder but between the two is problematic at the moment. We are told that his triceps are working, which control the opening up of the arm, but at this stage the bicepis not working. The bicep is the muscle that allows you to close your arm and is needed to carry weight etc. The doctors do not know at this stage what the outcome will be but continue to say that it is very early days and that movement is still a distinct possible outcome. Scott still has double vision but the positive of this is that he can have twice as many visitors at any one time (two of his old man at the one time is stretching this though). All up, the feedback we are getting from nursing staff is that he is doing real well and that we should see good progress now that he has moved beyond PTA and is able to do more rehab. These reports on Scott’s progress to date have detailed his condition from November 15th until now with something new happening almost daily. Further progress will continue but at times it will be hard for me to detail significant change as improvement will be in most instances slow. I will endeavour to highlight to you when Deb and I see significant changes. For us, we see the giant steps forward when we reflect on past week/s.
PS In Scott’s room there is a Visitors Book. We would appreciate itif you could record your visit with a comment of some sort in relation to your time spent with him. We would like to have this as a record for Scott to look back on and reflect on those who have joined in on his journey and to realise how far he has come from November 15th, 2008. For all visitors please be aware that his short-term memoryhas been severely affected BUT is improving. To help him, askhim questions like, ‘who have you had visiting’, ‘what did you have for lunch’, ‘nurses names?’, ‘what did you do in rehab today’, etc. Questions of a similar kind will help in this area. If you concentrate ONLY on pre-accident you will think that there was nothing much wrong because his long-term memory here is ok. He will want to know about the accident and this is only natural; try to refocus him on something else, but don’t simply fob him off in the process. Perhaps you could say, ‘if you knew the details, what would it change moving forward?’, ‘it won’t change anything’, ‘if you know the details, what then?’ or ‘you are getting better and that’s all that matters’.
Regards,
Harris family
From the moment my parents were told I had a brain injury, they began to research it. They didn’t realise how little they knew about the brain, in fact, how little anyone actually knows about the brain. For a long time, scientists have had the notion that the brain is fixed and unchanging. As time goes on and we put the puzzle together, new science tells us that the brain does indeed change. This is called neuroplasticity.
Vic picked up the book The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge and couldn’t put it down. It is about the phenomenon of neuroplasticity and how the brain can change its structural formation and function, when it was once thought to be static. It was thought that when a part of the brain dies, it’s dead, but we now know through science that the brain will form new connections between neurons (brain cells) when other parts are damaged or dead. The brain is like a super computer with no manual. It is very powerful, but we know very little about it. We humans are slowly but surely writing our own instruction manual on how we think it works.
My family now had hope for my recovery. Not a full recovery, but at least partial. To help me along this path, the medical staff explained to my immediate family that when they visited I should have as little stimulation as possible at first, to give my injured brain a chance to recover, and later I needed positive stimulation. Knowing that people wanted to visit me the staff told them that the right way to stimulate my injured brain was to ask me positive questions in a positive way that would make me think.
Positive stimulation is good for anyone’s brain, especially an injured brain. Knowing this, it became a ritual to do a Sudoku puzzle with my dad. A Sudoku is a number puzzle that generally comes in three levels: easy, medium and difficult. Doing these puzzles together was fun. It kind of felt like Dad was sitting down with his son to read him a bedtime story and in some ways, it was. It really felt like I was a child again and I had to start from scratch. We started off on the easy ones, with my dad looking over my shoulder and pointing to the boxes and basically giving me the answers in a very discreet way – ‘No it’s not four, that was close. I’ll give you a hint: it’s above five and below seven.’ Having this help meant that I did not get these wrong, which gave me encouragement. Doing these puzzles became such a habit to me that in later years I would be able to sit down and do these on my own, without Dad’s help.
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