Acquired Brain Injury Information – Finding What You Need

When Larry and I found out about my acquired brain injury, we began searching for information about it. I was primarily interested in understanding what had happened to me. While Larry was interested in finding that out too, he was also trying to come up with some solutions to our daily struggles. For instance, he was looking for answers as to how we could eliminate my daily headaches, depression, forgetfulness, and just my general state of unhappiness. He has never been able to stand seeing me unhappy.

He searched the internet where he finally found some information. Enough, at least, to recognize we needed to get professional help for some of those areas of concern. Okay, Larry recognized the need for that. I was a little harder to convince. I was still dealing with some denial issues at the time.

Once Larry found Dr. Corbitt, I was on my way to getting my migraines under control. It took years of gradually getting better, but we saw progress almost immediately in that area. I am still seeing Dr. Corbitt, but she is actuallyhas been trying to reduce my medication over time. One of the reasons I liked her from the beginning was because she appeared to want to find the cause and fix it, rather than just prescribing medication to reduce the symptoms. Since I don’t like to take any medication without a plan to eventually stop taking it, I liked her right away.

We had finally found a doctor who took the time to really understand there were multiple issues to deal with, and knew how to treat me for those headaches. In fact, she is the one who referred me to Dr. Wood, the psychologist who told us about the acquired brain injury I had sustained while I was in the hospital. He was able to see that after he read an MRI of my brain that had been ordered after I was released from the hospital. Dr. Corbitt then recommended Timber Ridge (the brain injury rehabilitation facility) which was pursued by Dr. Riley, my PCP. After a battle with the insurance company, I was finally approved for treatment there for my acquired brain injury.

Of course, all of the above prompted more searches on the internet. We could not get enough information. We had so many questions and we needed solutions. Along the way, we were provided with some professionally-prepared medical information about the various types of brain injury, but most of it was in medical terms we were not really familiar with; and, still there was nothing that helped us deal with the day to day frustrations of living with brain injury. The best help for those issues came from Timber Ridge, but we found we still had to expand and improve those strategies a bit to fit our particular issues.

As Larry points out in our book, Brain Injury Survivor’s Guide, it took us years before we could actually write down what had happened to me (us). As was also pointed out in the book, the writing of the book was a very emotional time for us. However, we felt it was time to share all the strategies we had obtained from various sources, concocted ourselves, and any other way we had discovered them.

We were seeing and hearing of soldiers coming home with various brain injuries they had acquired while serving overseas. We felt a burning desire to help them. Some of the help they were being offered was breaking our hearts. We knew how the early denial of the injury by the victim was, most likely, going to prevent them from getting the help they needed. There is such a stigma associated with brain injury since most people don’t really understand it. So many times people and institutions mean well, but when they haven’t walked in the shoes of someone with brain injury, they actually have no way of knowing how it feels. In the beginning, there is shame, helplessness, frustration, and so many other emotions.

Anyway, we wanted to give those soldiers, their families, and anyone else who had suffered a brain injury, an additional source of information and encouragement. We didn’t write the book to get rich. We knew from the beginning that not everyone would be interested in buying such a book. We were just hoping to provide information to those who would benefit from our experiences and the knowledge we had obtained about how to live with brain injury.

We have been blessed a thousand times over. We continue to receive praise from other brain injury survivors about how the book and our websites have helped them.

Brain Injury Online contains various information sources. Here are a few of them.

Types of Brain Injuries

Symptoms of Brain Injury

Brain Injury Attorneys

Brain Injury Rehabilitation

Veteran’s Information

Websites sponsored by organizations or brain injury facilities

Brain Injury Associations by State

If you are looking for information about brain injury, perhaps these links will be of some help to you. I always say, Knowledge is Power to someone living with brain injury. Read, learn, and apply.