• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

TBITalk

Traumatic Brain Injury Healing Tips

  • Ryan’s Near Death Experience
  • Grandpa’s Corner
  • TBI Recovery Posts
  • Who are We?
  • TBI Testimony
  • Doctor’s Corner

head

My Medical Journal Document

April 7, 2020 by Support

Sunday night I hit my head, just above my neck, right next to my left ear when my siblings and I were joking around in the kitchen and when I turned around, my little brother bumped into my sister (also younger lol) and she accidentally hit me with her cellphone. I didn’t want to overreact and cause an extra problem by rushing to the hospital because I didn’t feel like anything serious enough happened for me to leave my house with this virus situation that’s been going around.

I felt in between fine and not completely fine. I prayed to God that nothing would be severely wrong with me and tried not to be anxious.

I knew the signs to look out for because I’ve read many articles on health and always ask a lot of questions when I have gone to any type of healthcare office or facility for myself or someone I know. Some signs that I have read to be aware of after a hit to the head were, after nothing very obvious such as unconsciousness, vomiting, blood or fluid draining from the nose, ear or behind the ear. I checked myself for those red flags and thankfully, I was fine!

I told my family what happened, that I would be back but didn’t know what time and I was going to lay in my room because I felt drowsy after the hit. My mother said I should stay downstairs where everyone can keep an eye on me and I ended up staying downstairs and sitting on the sofa. My father brought me some Tylenol and I asked my sister to bring my eye mask to the living room. I was feeling a bit odd but didn’t know how to explain the feeling entirely. I kept saying “my head feels odd” and I felt a lot of pain in the spot where I hurt my head. 

I wanted to take a nap but I felt mentally awake so I ended up reading articles and texting a friend about what happened.

I also couldn’t fall asleep because everything was lively, nothing more than usual but my little brother is 8 and very active and I sleep better without stimulation. After a short while, I was getting frustrated because I felt tired and couldn’t fall asleep, on top of the fact that I was still in pain. I prayed repeatedly as I often do in stressful times, that Jesus would protect me from any major damage from what I hoped was a minor injury and I told Him all of my thoughts, feelings and concerns about what happened.

I also experienced a dulled sense of hearing in my left ear in the hour that followed my incident. 

Tuesday evening I started to have a mild pain (about a 3.5 on the pain scale) that went down the side of my neck and almost halfway around the front of my neck. It concerned me a bit and I was unsure why I was experiencing that. Over the next few days I continued to have that pain and it even switched to my right side. I have had more headaches, I believe general headaches have to do with my sleep pattern and I should increase my water intake as well. I will keep documenting to further understand what exactly happened.  

Fast forward another week, looking back I thought perhaps it was sympathetic nerve pain and will look that up tomorrow. As for my right side hurting instead of my left, I will have to do more research. I still have mild, occasional on and off pain on the sides of my neck and the soft spot on my upper neck behind my ear, on my left side feels pretty normal. It only has a slight discomfort when I press on that area to see if I feel more sensitivity on my left side than my right, and I do. Fortunately though, I am doing well and haven’t suffered any serious repercussions, so I am grateful to God for that!

It’s crazy to think all of those details and changes happened in a week and a couple days! The human body is fascinating and I continue to be in awe of how God created all the parts of the body to be intertwined so specifically and intricately. Evolution absolutely couldn’t come up with that.

Filed Under: Facts Tagged With: body, head, Health, Jesus, Neck

Diffuse Axonal Injury

February 15, 2017 by Support Leave a Comment

Audio:

http://www.tbitalk.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Diffuse-Axonal-Injury.mp3

Diffuse Axonal Injury (DAI) A  brain injury, in which damage is in the form of extensive lesions in white matter tracts occurs over a widespread area. DAI is one of the most prevalent and devastating types of traumatic brain injury, DAIs are a major cause of unconsciousness and most likely, leads to vegetative state after severe head trauma. The outcome is frequently a coma, with over 90% of patients with severe DAI never again, regaining consciousness. Those who do wake up often remain significantly impaired.

DAI can occur in every measure of severity from very mild or moderate to very severe

 

Diffuse axonal injury (DAI) is a brain injury in which damage in the form of extensive lesions in white matter tracts occurs over a widespread area. DAI is one of the most common and devastating types of traumatic brain injury,[1] and is a major cause of unconsciousness and persistent vegetative state after severe head trauma.[2] It occurs in about half of all cases of severe head trauma and may be the primary damage that occurs in concussion. The outcome is frequently coma, with over 90% of patients with severe DAI never regaining consciousness. Those who do wake up often remain significantly impaired.

 

  • DAI can occur in every degree of severity from very mild or moderate to very severe. Concussion may be a milder type of diffuse axonal injury.
  • Mechanism
  • Unlike brain trauma that occurs due to direct impact and deformation of the brain, DAI is the result of traumatic shearing forces that occur when the head is rapidly accelerated or decelerated, as may occur in car accidents, falls, and assaults.[5] It usually results from rotational forces or severe deceleration. Vehicle accidents are the most frequent cause of DAI; it can also occur as the result of child abuse[6] such as in shaken baby syndrome.
  • The major cause of damage in DAI is the disruption of axons, the neural processes that allow one neuron to communicate with another. Tracts of axons, which appear white due to myelination, are referred to as white matter. Acceleration causes shearing injury: damage inflicted as tissue slides over other tissue. When the brain is accelerated, parts of differing densities and distances from the axis of rotation slide over each other, stretching axons that traverse junctions between areas of different density, especially at junctions between white and grey matter. Two-thirds of DAI lesions occur in areas where grey and white matter meet.
  • Characteristics
  • Lesions typically exist in the white matter of brains injured by DAI; these lesions vary in size from about 1–15 mm and are distributed in a characteristic way. DAI most commonly affects white matter in areas including the brain stem, the corpus callosum, and the cerebral hemispheres.
  • The lobes of the brain most likely to be injured are the frontal and temporal lobes. Other common locations for DAI include the white matter in the cerebral cortex, the superior cerebral peduncles, basal ganglia, thalamus, and deep hemispheric nuclei. These areas may be more easily damaged because of the difference in density between them and the rest of the brain.
  • Histological characteristics
  • DAI is characterized by axonal separation, in which the axon is torn at the site of stretch and the part distal to the tear degrades. While it was once thought that the main cause of axonal separation was tearing due to mechanical forces during the trauma, it is now understood that axons are not typically torn upon impact; rather, secondary biochemical cascades, which occur in response to the primary injury (which occurs as the result of mechanical forces at the moment of trauma) and take place hours to days after the initial injury, are largely responsible for the damage to axons.
  • Though the processes involved in secondary brain injury are still poorly understood, it is now accepted that stretching of axons during injury causes physical disruption to and proteolytic degradation of the cytoskeleton.[1] It also opens sodium channels in the axolemma, which causes voltage-gated calcium channels to open and Ca2+ to flow into the cell.[1] The intracellular presence of Ca2+ unleashes several different pathways, including activating phospholipases and proteolytic enzymes, damaging mitochondria and the cytoskeleton, and activating secondary messengers, which can lead to separation of the axon and death of the cell.
  • Cytoskeleton disruption-
  • Immunoreactive axonal profiles are observed as either granular (B,G,H) or more elongated, fusiform (F) swellings in the corpus callosum and the brain stem (H) at 24h post traumatic brain injury. Example of APP-immunoreactive neurons (arrow heads) observed in the cortex underneath the impact site (E,G). No APP staining was observed in healthy control animals (D).
  • Axons are normally elastic, but when rapidly stretched they become brittle, and the axonal cytoskeleton can be broken. Misalignment of cytoskeletal elements after stretch injury can lead to tearing of the axon and death of the neuron. Axonal transport continues up to the point of the break in the cytoskeleton, but no further, leading to a buildup of transport products and local swelling at that point. When it becomes large enough, swelling can tear the axon at the site of the break in the cytoskeleton, causing it to draw back toward the cell body and form a bulb. This bulb is called a retraction ball, the hallmark of diffuse axonal injury.
  • When the axon is transected, Wallerian degeneration, in which the part of the axon distal to the break degrades, takes place within one to two days after injury. The axolemma disintegrates, myelin breaks down and begins to detach from cells in an anterograde direction (from the body of the cell toward the end of the axon),and nearby cells begin phagocytic activity, engulfing debris.
  • Calcium influx
  • While sometimes only the cytoskeleton is disturbed, frequently disruption of the axolemma occurs as well, causing the influx of Ca2+ into the cell and unleashing a variety of degrading processes. An increase in Ca2+ and Na+ levels and a drop in K+ levels is found within the axon directly after injury. Possible routes of Ca2+ entry include sodium channels, pores torn in the membrane during stretch, and failure of ATP-dependent transporters due to mechanical blockage or lack of energy. High levels of intracellular Ca2+, the major cause of post-injury cell damage, destroy mitochondria,and trigger phospholipases and proteolytic enzymes that damage Na+ channels and degrade or alter the cytoskeleton and the axoplasm. Excess Ca2+ can also lead to damage to the blood brain barrier and swelling of the brain.
  • One of the proteins activated by the presence of calcium in the cell is calpain, a Ca2+-dependent non-lysosomal protease. About 15 minutes to half an hour after the onset of injury, a process called calpain-mediated spectrin proteolysis, or CMSP, begins to occur.[19] Calpain breaks down a molecule called spectrin, which holds the membrane onto the cytoskeleton, causing the formation of blebs and the breakdown of the cytoskeleton and the membrane, and ultimately the death of the cell.[18][19] Other molecules that can be degraded by calpains are microtubule subunits, microtubule-associated proteins, and neurofilaments.
  • Generally occurring one to six hours into the process of post-stretch injury, the presence of calcium in the cell initiates the caspase cascade, a process in cell injury that usually leads to apoptosis, or “cell suicide”.
  • Mitochondria, dendrites, and parts of the cytoskeleton damaged in the injury have a limited ability to heal and regenerate, a process which occurs over 2 or more weeks. After the injury, astrocytes can shrink, causing parts of the brain to atrophy.
  • Diagnosis
  • Diffuse axonal injury after a motorcycle accident. MRI after 3 days: on T1-weighted images the injury is barely visible. On the FLAIR, DWI and T2* weighted images a small bleed is appreciated.
  • DAI is difficult to detect since it does not show up well on CT scans or with other macroscopic imaging techniques, though it shows up microscopically. However, there are characteristics typical of DAI that may or may not show up on a CT scan. Diffuse injury has more microscopic injury than macroscopic injury and is difficult to detect with CT and MRI, but its presence can be inferred when small bleeds are visible in the corpus callosum or the cerebral cortex. MRI is more useful than CT for detecting characteristics of diffuse axonal injury in the subacute and chronic time frames. Newer studies such as Diffusion Tensor Imaging are able to demonstrate the degree of white matter fiber tract injury even when the standard MRI is negative. Since axonal damage in DAI is largely a result of secondary biochemical cascades, it has a delayed onset, so a person with DAI who initially appears well may deteriorate later. Thus injury is frequently more severe than is realized, and medical professionals should suspect DAI in any patients whose CT scans appear normal but who have symptoms like unconsciousness.
  • MRI is more sensitive than CT scans, but MRI may also miss DAI, because it identifies the injury using signs of edema, which may not be present.
  • DAI is classified into grades based on severity of the injury. In Grade I, widespread axonal damage is present but no focal abnormalities are seen. In Grade II, damage found in Grade I is present in addition to focal abnormalities, especially in the corpus callosum. Grade III damage encompasses both Grades I and II plus rostral brain stem injury and often tears in the tissue.[23]
  • Treatment
  • DAI currently lacks a specific treatment beyond what is done for any type of head injury, including stabilizing the patient and trying to limit increases in intracranial pressure (ICP).
  • History
  • The idea of DAI first came about as a result of studies by Sabina Strich on lesions of the white matter of individuals who had suffered head trauma years before.[24] Strich first proposed the idea in 1956, calling it diffuse degeneration of white matter, however, the more concise term “Diffuse Axonal Injury” was eventually preferred. Strich was researching the relationship between dementia and head trauma and asserted in 1956 that DAI played an integral role in the eventual development of dementia due to head trauma. The term DAI was introduced in the early 1980s.

Filed Under: Facts, Info Tagged With: dai., diffuse axonal injury, fact, head, head trauma, tbi, traumatic brain injury

Thinking Positive Goes a Long Way

December 23, 2016 by Support Leave a Comment

[huge_it_share]TBI-PostWP_large

Ever since my accident on August 13th, 2012, I look at things/events in my life in a whole different way. Positive Thinking is what I use all the time, so much so; it grew into a habit. An example of this ‘Positive Thinking’ is from when I was in my coma and how I thought, Whatever kind of state I am in now, it will get better, I will be back to normal once again’.

Okay, okay, that is an extreme example, ‘positive thinking’, could work in your life even for more, ‘simple’ occurrences/things. Even to the point when you get a small cut that looks like it will take a long time to heal. You then focusing your attention on the cut, and thinking “This will heal soon,” will likely heal the wound faster than normally, rather than ignoring the wound right after getting it.

I have always believed in the principle ‘Positive Thoughts, Positive Results’. This theory has almost never let me down before. Most importantly, we have to remember by thinking positively, we are practicing one of the characteristics God has, positive energy.

Thereby, doing as such, brings a multitude of other miraculous gifts into your life, such as, a miraculous peace, an increased amount of energy, among a plethora of others.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: body, cut, head, head trauma, heal, heal heal, heal tbi, healing, tbi, trauma, ways, ways to heal a tbi, ways to heal tbi, wound

Primary Sidebar

Check out the new Grandpa’s Corner article!

http://www.tbitalk.com/grandpas-corner/

Search Now

©2020 Copyright TBITalk