IUS Personal Counseling helped sponsor a presentation by Steve Bliss at IVY Tech about “Traumatic brain injury, How does it impact my life?”
The presentation covered the different types of brain injuries that can occur, as well how to live with it as a victim or if it happens to a family member or close friend.
“This is a part of a series that IUS and IVY Tech are partnered together for,” Bliss said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Injury Prevention website, traumatic brain injuries are triggered by an external physical force and not a degenerative aspect.
Bliss went over the different types of brain injuries ranging from mild traumatic to major TBI. He also listed how to deal with each case and the care the person must go through in order to be resubmitted back into society.
According to the CDC, 52,000 people die after they’ve had a TBI while 275,000 are hospitalized and 1.3 million are treated and released from an emergency department after a brain injury.
“There are two scales that can be used to determine how serious the brain injury is,” Bliss said. “Those scales are The Rancho Los Amigos Scale and The Glasgow Coma Scale.”
The Glasgow is a 15-point-scale that uses a grading system to determine how injured the person is where as the Rancho Los Amigos Scale has eight levels a victim could fall into.
These both have their purposes and uses. With the Glasgow, the category a person would fall into is specific.
However, the Rancho scale would require a medical professional to put the victim in a level using their own judgement.
“There is a time when [the victim] can make new memories and the fog lifts,” Bliss said. “However, they may never remember the incident that caused them to have TBI, and they probably don’t need to remember it, either.”
There are many different types of brain injuries, including concussions, contusions, shaken baby syndrome and open head injuries.
Parketta Cartwright, general studies senior, said she has suffered from a brain injury.
“I was in a car accident when I was 48 and have brain injuries,” Cartwright said.
Cartwright spoke about one time when she wrote a check for a bill but ended up messing up the numbers and paid more than she had in her bank account because she had become over-stimulated.
“If you’ve had a brain injury, you are more vulnerable to over-stimulation,” Bliss said. “Even the smallest tasks can cause you to lose focus and mess something small up.”
Bliss said the effects of TBI affect everyone involved, including their family and friends.
“If you’ve seen one brain injury, you have [only seen] one brain injury,” Bliss said. “All of them are different.”
The presentation provided awareness about what it is like to live with TBI and what the victims have to go through.
“If we accept ourselves for who we are, instead of the past us, you will move forward,” Bliss Said.
By BRYAN JONES
Staff
jonesbry@umail.iu.edu