TBI and returning to I.T. work

[Queenie Alexander]

Hi,

My partner has a very recent severe brain injury (42 days inpatient; 51 days until out of PTA) but is making great progress.
Although he was injured whilst working in another area entirely, his
passion was content-managing his website which has multi-authors and is
very popular in Australia. The other authors maintained the content,
but not the management, while he was in hospital and still help a lot
whilst he is in rehab as an out-patient twice a week. He had a long gap
in IT employment after a couple of years working in IT programming
research in a university due to problems with doctoral program
competition and funding. He lost confidence but was building it up with
self-funded non-profit work, whilst working in a cleaning job for past
three years. Now he is being retrained for the semi-skilled occupation
he happened to have had when the accident occurred, but he is trying
hard to retrain himself in content management and to try and create a
test-bed involving several computers at home. He is worried that if he
goes back to the cleaning job, he won't have any energy to do anything
he likes. He is trying to make his drupal content-managed web-site more
structured, maintainable and able to be rebuilt should it be hacked. He
is also trying to build mirror sites, but is having problems working
out whether he needs to transmit the sites in total to the mirror on a
daily basis or whether there is a way to simply update mysql as well as
jpg content. This needs at home a physically secure test-bed computer,
preferably a Linux computer, which he is currently trying to get
together. I feel that what he needs is others with similar experience
of TBI and of computers who might like to form some mutual discussion
and support for technical and TBI matters.

I am keen to link up and perhaps to link him up with others who may have returned to
professional I.T. work, or be trying to do so.

I will also make contact with some locals who may give him some work experience.

He has scattered diffuse axonal damage focused in the left frontal
subcortex, plus a query lesion in brain-stem (balance subtly off) and
scattered diffuse axonal in corpus callosum, but he has a very big
brain and lots left. His verbal memory is most affected and his
processing is slow still (much faster in the morning). At the moment,
of course (the accident was in mid-may this year 2010) his is still
rather scattered, very weak, prone to terrible anxiety and insecurity,
to put it mildly. He can also be quite focused and his continuous
memory is building up better than I would have hoped. I love him a
great deal and want to support him, but he does need to start
interacting with and learning from others who have had the same
experience so that he feels less of an outsider and can gain in
self-esteem.

By the way, I am interested in some of the theories in the Brain that heals itself - what do others think?

[Richard J]

It takes time to recover. I work as a IT person, as a coordinator for an intranet website. It took me 5 months before I was even able to start my "pre-injury" work again. But starting again was as hard as my rehab. I started at about 4 - 8 hours a week (yes a week), and just added more hours when I was able too.The company I work for was very kind and allowed that time it took me to recover. I wasn't back to work full-time until a year later. So tell him, just to do want he can when he can. See if there's a school or adult-ed center that needs volunteers to help others with computer issues/problems. See if there's a support group nearby. It's impossible to know how long it will take him as there is no such thing as a TBI time schedule, You are right, he needs to be in-touch with others. In my humble opinion the worst thing we survivors can do is to hide our injuries from others.

[Queenie Alexander]

Hi Richard,

Many thanks for taking the time to tell me of your experience, which I will pass on to my partner, James. I will encourage him to join this network for himself. I found the details you have given of time-frames particularly interesting, bearing in mind, of course, that there are so many variables.

I have some more questions, but will leave them til a little bit later.

best,

Queenie

Richard J said:

It takes time to recover. I work as a IT person, as a coordinator for an intranet website. It took me 5 months before I was even able to start my "pre-injury" work again. But starting again was as hard as my rehab. I started at about 4 - 8 hours a week (yes a week), and just added more hours when I was able too.The company I work for was very kind and allowed that time it took me to recover. I wasn't back to work full-time until a year later. So tell him, just to do want he can when he can. See if there's a school or adult-ed center that needs volunteers to help others with computer issues/problems. See if there's a support group nearby. It's impossible to know how long it will take him as there is no such thing as a TBI time schedule, You are right, he needs to be in-touch with others. In my humble opinion the worst thing we survivors can do is to hide our injuries from others.

[Benjamin Luskin]

Queenie,

I sustained a severe traumatic brain injury at the age of twelve, about 90 days inpatient, months outpatient, and now, 16 years later, I am able to demonstrate both mental and physical levels of performance that far surpass what anyone ever thought was possible. In truth, though, it was not regaining lost abilities as much as it was teaching myself new abilities. You mentioned interest in the way the brain heals itself. Indeed, the brain never ceases its development. This being the case, it seems natural that one "teach" the brain what it wants to know. And those of us whose brains have been shook by a TBI are made intimately aware of just how their brains function. This awareness enables us to direct that "learning process." That awareness can also instill in survivors a great determination to transform. This is good because hard work is required. One must meet ALL of one's shadows along the way, even walk with them and hold their hands. But these "dark" experiences are exactly what provide access into the concealed layers of the brain, where the control pannel is set. So what it really all comes down to is planning, initiating, and guiding one's development into the person one wants to be.

[Emerson]

Great answers from both Benjamin and Richard. I think Benjamin nailed it about the brain healing itself. Reality is we are developing new neural pathways. It takes time. A whole lot of time. Your partner is going to continue to heal for at least 10 years.

My doc explained that processing speed is the very slowest to improve. It makes sense. Human brains have the most neural connections at 3 years of age. After that the brain improves the highly used pathways by making them faster and faster - sort of how a river carves a channel where the water can flow much faster than if it was spreading out over a flat surface. So what happens for those of us with a TBI (or ABI) is first we must regrow the pathway, which takes time. Then we work at making the pathway become faster - processing speed.

It would be good for you and your partner to talk with the Physiatrist wherever he is getting his rehab treatment. Ask about what is to be expected currently. Ask about what is likely to happen in the next 6 months. From your post I am wondering if anyone has really sat down and talked through the basics of what to expect.

Brain fatigue comes with the current plumbing. He will find that he can maintain much better if he literally lays down and rests for at least a half hour 3 or 4 times a day. Remember how much little kids need to nap when they are building their brains? We need to nap because it recharges the brain battery. I work for about 4 hours then sleep for an hour. Then I can go for about 2 more hours and rest again. The rest of the day I schedule things where I absolutely won't need to think hard or process fast. The napping is incredibly important to the healing of the brain. It will help ease almost all of the symptoms including the anxiety issues. Have you noticed that his anxiety is also not as bad in the morning and gets worse later?

HTH
Em

[Jerry]

we all heal its how we adjust to the new self, and his injury is very fresh it took me years to be able to do the things i need to, take things slow and planned if he over loads to much it will take him longer to accept and adapt good luck with his journey