Traumatic Brain Injuries 101

Traumatic Brain Injuries 101 In the United States, 52,000 deaths occur each year from a traumatic brain injury (TBI), and 5.3 million people live with disabilities due to a TBI. But a TBI does not necessarily result from a major trauma, like skiing into a tree or plummeting off a roof. You can sustain a TBI from bumping your head on a kitchen cabinet door, or when you and your five year old smack foreheads while wrestling. Penetrating injuries – from a bullet, or other objects that enter the skull – can also cause TBI’s. But the most common causes are from auto accidents and falls.

TBIs range from mild to severe. Mild injuries – concussions – are the most common. Symptoms include confusion, irritability, nausea, fatigue, amnesia around the event, and loss of consciousness up to 30 minutes. But it’s possible to suffer a mild TBI and not lose consciousness. Also, being diagnosed with a mild TBI does not mean the consequences are mild, such as decreased concentration and attention, getting lost and confused, headaches, dizziness, depression, mood swings, sleep disturbances, and difficulty with balance. Many people experience these symptoms for years, which is what happened to me. I still suffer from poor concentration, depression, difficulty multi-tasking, planning and even judging distance. When driving, for instance, I have trouble thinking ahead (at least that’s what my husband tells me). But it’s true. My brain can’t process all the stimuli coming at me: other cars, beeping horns, bicycles, and joggers. It doesn’t have enough room to focus on getting in the left lane soon enough so I can take a left turn.

In moderate TBI’s, the individual loses consciousness from 30 minutes to 24 hours, and in severe TBIs, longer than 24 hours. Symptoms are worse for people diagnosed with moderate to severe TBIs. They tend to exhibit obvious behavioral issues like aggression, and suffer greater physical impairments, like decreased ability to smell (anosmia), ringing in the ears (tinnitus), paralysis, and slurred speech.

But the challenge is in diagnosing TBIs, especially mild ones (like I said earlier, mild from a trauma perspective, not from a consequence perspective. I’ll address the nuances of this in a future post). My TBI was diagnosed in 2006, three years after I sustained the injury. During the immediate hours after the accident, the doctors where concerned with my other injuries – stopping the bleeding from my ruptured spleen and stabilizing my fractured pelvis. So I struggled in the workplace for two years, and at home, blaming my symptoms wholly on PTSD.

http://www.northeastern.edu/nutraumaticbraininjury/consequences-of-tbi/