This is actually a question rather than a comment. How will supports for persons with TBI continue after their sub-acute period, when they might return home and are unable to work? How is the VA working toward solving this problem, or how are they linking with Medicaid programs (etc.) to support these veterans who suffer from TBI?

Sent by Ruth Sommers | 2:50 PM ET | 05-08-2007

Bob Woodruff did not answer "would you be an advocate to research and treatment of tbi ?" Typical of me still even after 10 years of progress at NYU, Mayo and Upledger Clinic after no care since 1989. Woodruff forgot the question as would be shown in neuropsych tests. Who is his physiatrist? Or case manager? Jack 850-222-9935

Sent by jack sisson | 3:25 PM ET | 05-08-2007

It has been wonderful to listen to this show today. And when I heard the woman call and talk about her "mild" brain injury problems, I thought, this is what I have been waiting for. In 1992, I was in a bicycle accident (I believe the bike hit a grate or a hole, stopped dead, and I flew over the top and hit the cement.) From that time on, I had depression different than I had ever had before and had so many subtle other things happening that made my life and my employment so difficult. I couldn't keep things straight, I couldn't order my memories right, distractions took me from one thing to another so that it was difficult to remember where I was in a task to complete that task, and I I couldn't remember and had to repeat things like numbers so many times that I took longer to do tasks than my supervisors allowed for & therefore lost job after job when they discovered I was not getting faster but sometimes even slower (from getting nervous because I wasn't going faster). These are things that no one else can see and much of the time no one else believes me that they are happening and I am not faking it. My psychologist told me that the areas affected involve the "planning and organizational" areas of the brain (the left frontal area), and that is why I see the things I do. I really resonated with the comment that "it is more than telling the person to keep a list"! I had case workers that were so frustrated because the schedules they would set up for me to follow did not work for me. I kept telling one that the one thing that is the hardest in the world for me is something done the same day after day. My brain jusst didn't work that way. I would clean something one day and the following day had no recollection of where I had put it the day before without detailed notes which took me so long and also had to have a place I would find them. At this point I have made it to where most of that is gone and I organize mostly very well at this point. It is however fourteen years later. It is the depression that had finally helped me get disability payments and I am so scared of challenging myself with full time work, losing these payments, and not being able to make it fast enough in work again. Thank though so much for addressing this. Even though mine wasn't called "traumatic" brain injury, it changed my life forever. -Kathleen Hobson

Sent by Kathleen Hobson | 3:33 PM ET | 05-08-2007

I wonder if contact is made with MIT's Brain Study Ctr established with a more than significant gift by my former employer, Patrick McGovern of International Data Corp. There are probably areas where their and medical discoveries about the brain can be of assistance to each other. At least keeping each other in the loop on information could be constructive.

Sent by claire e wallace | 3:44 PM ET | 05-08-2007

I survived a violent trauma, though not in the military. I'm wondering how what the military is learning about rehabilitating people from trauma is being taken up by psychiatrists outside of the military. If people are in denial and block out memory of a severely traumatic event, are the mental and emotional signs of trauma identified in psychiatric screenings? Do signs of trauma overlap with signs of other mental disorders? If so, how do psychiatrists decide what to treat? Is the trauma treated as the root cause from which the other symptoms result? Does that resolve the other symptoms?

Sent by Irene | 4:19 PM ET | 05-08-2007

I'm a 35 yr old woman with multiple MTBI's from child abuse, repeated head/brain injuries from age 6 through age 12. Disability & Social Security provide an income BELOW POVERTY level ... Ohio's recourses for MTBI patients post-injury are severely lacking, while Oregon's old recourses for MTBI were fantastic - specifically, the Federally Funded programs called ACT I & ACT II, of which I can no longer find anywhere ... why doesn't more states use those programs? Plus, can us civillians with TBI/MTBI benefit from the advances in post-injury treatment/follow-up care that the souldiers are now supposedly getting? Furthermore, Ruth Sommers, concerning your comments on this blog, Medicaid/Medicare is NOT sufficiently taking care of MTBI/TBI survivors ... we are oftentimes "lost in the system" being too high functioning for some help & not high functioning enough for some other help ... I call it the medical equivalent of "falling through the cracks." I can only hope all those tax dollars can start going toward helping people pick up the pieces of changed, shattered lives & get appropriate, effective, accessible medical & financial guidance/assistance for coping & living productively with TBI & MTBI. What is being said about the little research & experimentations with fetal brain stem cells & also with analogous stem cells & finally with cord blood stem cells ... & adults who are survivors of brain injuries like TBI/MTBI? Comment directly to me at KLPCreations@aol.com if you like.

Sent by Kelly Parsons | 7:03 PM ET | 05-08-2007

I only caught a short bit of the TBI Talk of the Nation broadcast. I don't know what kind of treatments were discussed, but considering my husband's experiences after his 3 brain injuries, I suspect that the extremely effective treatments we used and are using were not mentioned.
After his 3rd head injury in a 10 year period, my husband's team of MD's told us it was unlikely he would ever be able to work or drive again, and that he would have to learn to live with extreme pain. In addition, he was still too intelligent, the injury was invisible and pain is hard to document, so they all felt it was extremely unlikely that he would be able to get his disability insurance, even with them fighting for him. All they could offer him were pharmaceuticals, which had not proven to be particularly effective for my husband, and either regular lumbar taps or a shunt to reduce the cerebral spinal fluid pressure.
At this point, my husband could not talk to anyone, myself included, without it inducing significant symptoms, He had found that watching TV helped put his brain on idle and that was virtually all he could do. The predicted prognosis was a grim life sentence at age 55.
I have studied alternative healing and nutrition for over 35 years, and I had been looking into alternatives as it was. We asked my husband's primary care doctor to help us find a place that would give my husband hyperbaric oxygen therapy (hbot). She found a facility that would treat conditions AMA medicine doesn't list for hbot and my husband began a round of 40 1 hour sessions. After the 8th session, his headaches were sharply reduced. Cerebral spinal fluid pressure was reduced in every session. Eleven days after his last hbot session, he was back at work.
He was still unable to drive due to problems with his vision. An eye doctor diagnosed convergence insufficiency, not uncommon after a head injury, and after several vision therapy sessions, my husband was certified well enough to drive again.
The use of nutrients has been very effective. A source of monosaccharides/glyconutrients, recommended by the hbot clinic we went to, greatly enhanced the hbot healing.
The final piece - so far - has been using amino acids as brain chemical precursors. The results were so remarkable, my husband's neurologist requested reading material to learn more about this ongoing and very effective treatment. My husband has been able to "titrate" his dosages and has learned which amino acids to use to control which symptoms. This has been far more effective than the use of pharmaceuticals, many of which lose effectiveness over time and are addictive.
My husband is not healed completely and, even with ongoing research and ongoing treatments, I suspect he will have symptoms for the rest of his life. However, the improvement made by hbot, vision therapy and nutrients has been so incredibly significant that he doctors were amazed and we now have a future we can look forward to instead of dread.
We have read with great frustration about how many of our brave service men and women are suffering from TBI and we know it is highly unlikely that they are getting, at the very least, hbot. Hbot is in AMA medicine's arsenal, but is greatly underused. We not only experienced my husband's significant healing from it, we witnessed others undergoing treatment for strokes and cerebral palsy who were making remarkable progress. The treatment is much more commonly used in other parts of the world. Many professional athletes use hbot for its remarkable ability to heal soft tissue damage and get them off the bench and back into play (Lance Armstrong, John Schmolz, etc). Although the sooner hbot is started, the better, we saw evidence, via a SPECT scan (3-D brain imagery) of a 28 year old injury on the brain that hbot healed.
My husband and I are committed to trying to get the word out and trying to get insurance to cover such treatments. It has been an uphill battle. I would hope that our service people - and others - will not have to battle at home for treatment that could give them their lives back.
We have friends who are still fighting the effects of Agent Orange. Why is it that our soldiers risk their lives for us and they get rewarded poorly for their efforts and are left to suffer without the support of already existing and well known techniques?

Sent by Miranda Paymer | 9:01 PM ET | 05-08-2007

Thank goodness you are getting the word out about alternative treatments. To make a long story short, indications are I was given date rape drugs many times in college. These are heavy drugs which can cause lasting brain damage. I used to score at a genius level on IQ tests; now my IQ is 25 points lower. I would like to try the amino acid therapy you describe. Could you provide a link to information? Currently, sometimes I use "liquid aminos," a natural product that substitutes for soy sauce. I go to an acupuncture doctor who draws energy -- and I assume everything energy circulates, such as oxygen and nutrients -- to my brain. This has restored many mental functions including more memories and my ability to sense danger. I wonder if there are parallels between what acupuncture and hbot does? Good for you -- keep getting the word out! I think blogs are a mainstay of the grassroots democratic process!

Sent by Irene | 1:41 AM ET | 05-10-2007