Caring for Injured Loved Ones with Traumatic Brain Injury

Our personal injury firm sees clients with burns, amputations, and paralysis. Some of the worst and most challenging injuries we see are traumatic brain injuries, or TBIs. This week we want to talk a little bit about how to help your family or friends if they have suffered a TBI and what strategies a caregiver can employ to take the strain off themselves and their loved one. If you find yourself in this awful and stressful situation, there are many resources available to you, whether online or in the area! At the conclusion of this post, you will find a list of online tools for self-care and caregiving for a person with a TBI and also a short list of places in the Shreveport/Bossier area that you can seek treatment for your friend or family member.

This week, we will start simple. After an accident which causes a TBI, the injured party might experience any one or more of the following symptoms:

• Depression/Crying Spells
• Memory Loss
• Confusion
• Short Temper
• Rash Decision-Making
• Word-finding Problems
• Sensitivity to Light/Sound

With the onslaught of these symptoms, it can be easy to become frustrated with the person we once knew, and it can be extremely challenging to watch someone we love turn into someone else. Patience, therefore, is of critical importance.

This blog, concerning real individuals who have experienced a TBI, may help to open our eyes to what trauma victims go through and what they need from their caregivers. Patience and understanding seem to be the most valuable to trauma victims. Here are just a few of the insights found on that blog:

• A lack of energy is not laziness.
• Being slow to respond in conversation doesn’t mean they are not interested.
• Normal tasks take much more effort after a TBI, emotionally and physically.

The physical ramifications of an accident can be traumatic and last many years, but injuries to the brain can be just as severe, if not more so. People with brain injuries can require years and years of treatment or therapy to rewire their memory or language processing centers. This ongoing process can and must be aided by those in their home, people who can see them every day and help reestablish their mental abilities.

In the long road after a brain injury, just remember this. As hard as it is to see a loved one suffer and experience personality changes, they are suffering those effects too. They must cope with the changes happening within them which they often cannot control. So…patience. It will help you, and it will certainly help them.

I know patience is often just a mindset and attitude, but here are a few practical strategies:

• Keep a planner for yourself and the patient you’re caring for—this will help keep a schedule so that no appointments or engagements fall through the cracks.
• Try to be considerate in conversations, and keep things simple—just discuss one topic at a time, and give the other person a chance to fully process and respond before speeding to another topic.
• Use post-it notes to remind your loved one of things they need to accomplish during the day—let’s face it, everyone could use reminders like this, and it may prevent certain simple tasks from being forgotten!

As promised here is a list of places in the Shreveport/Bossier area that may help you provide care to your loved one who has experienced a TBI:

Changing Behavior Services, LLC—Out-patient mental health rehab (skills training), counseling, & medication management
1434 Hawn Ave Ste 12, Shreveport, LA 71107
Contact: Angela Stills-Brown & Jennifer Brown (318) 675-0224
angelabrown@cbsmhr.com

Samaritan Counseling Center—Provides professional counseling, psychotherapy, and educational service
1525 Stephens Street, Shreveport, LA 71101
Contact: Barbra Peterson (318) 221-6121
samaritanshreve@juno.com

Here is a list of online resources, as well (including the blog referenced in this article):

• https://www.brainline.org/
• https://www.caregiver.org/traumatic-brain-injury
• https://www.parentcenterhub.org/tbi/

If you would like to read more about how our firm has handled TBI cases, visit our Brain Injury page.