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Originally Posted by Sonarlily
Hi everyone. My husband suffered a severe TBI back in Feb after falling from a skateboard. Glasgow coma scale of 7 upon admission to the hospital. ICU for a week, rehab for six weeks. He lucked out because he has no medical issues or physical side effects. He was doing really well for a long time, emotionally, and now he's just stressed and emotional and taking things personally...
He was supposed to ramp up to forty hour work weeks over an extended period of time, but he only took about a month to do so. I think this was a mistake. Since his forty hour work weeks started, he has been so irritable. Anything I do or say can set him off.... Anything that anyone says or does can set him off, though I'm the only person to really see it because he expresses himself to me. If I try to talk about things with him, if I try to troubleshoot or share observations about his behavior, I'm accused of micro-managing and blaming everything on his brain injury and being an *edit*. He won't give anyone the benefit of the doubt for anything, and he takes his interpretations of people's motives as gospel truth. I have to admit, I'm not exactly a stable rock and I deal with my own mental health issues (depression) and I'm having to handle this situation without family support or close friends, as we are overseas. I also miss my best friend (husband), who was my rock prior to this injury. I'm sure my emotionality is not helping the situation. Anyway..
He had bad habits prior to the injury such as not sleeping enough, occasional smoking, drinking too much coffee, and he is sliding back into those habits. If I talk to him about these habits, again, I get accused of micro-managing. I don't even approach these subjects often... It's just that if it's even discussed, he freaks on me.
I'm trying to decide if I should go to his boss (he's in the military so things can be worked out) and ask him to figure out a way to give my husband a break for a few more weeks, but I know if my husband finds out it will **** him off royally. I think scaling back by a couple hours a day would be beneficial to him. Is there something I'm not thinking of? Is there a better way to talk to him about things? I know it's impossible to eliminate all negative responses and outbursts are par for the course with his recovery.
I feel so lost.
Emily
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These are symptoms of brain injury. The irritability, rigid thinking, going back to bad habits. They are kind of the way the brain copes with it's new deficits, the frustration of not thinking as agile and flexible as before, getting a bit "overloaded" at his thinking "hitting a wall". The brain kinda doesn't know any better, it doesn't know that some bits of itself aren't there anymore and things need to be "rerouted".
Yeah, all par for the course of recovery. Things do improve some with time. Slowly, a lot of his old personality will emerge. He does love you very much, you will get a lot of him back. He may also seem very self-centered, that's what injured brains do, too. It just takes a lot of time and self-focus to unscramble itself. Just know that everything he's doing is coping mechanisms that are what brains do on their way to figuring life out again.
Sounds like his thinking is somewhat more concrete and maybe less abstract than before, this accounts for that "hitting the wall" frustration. This means that instead of just talking to him about coffee / smoking, he may need to see more "concrete" evidence that these things make his brain worse, like a video or in print from an authoritative source. And he may not take them from you. Has he had any neuro care since being back to work? A therapist may help.
I wish I could help more, I did have lots of links but I just had to reinstall Windows on my PC and I've lost everything. :-(
When he gets irritated, try "redirecting" him... change the subject to something more positive. I.E. I have had some major chaos with my kitchen being demo'd and rebuilt due to a water leak. Once when my son was expressing anger about all the commotion and upheaval, I suggested that when it's done we should celebrate with cooking a favorite meal -- lobster, steaks, cake -- he latched on to that idea quick, his response was "LOBSTER!!"
Since then there has been little muttering, now he has something to look forward to at the end of this mess. Redirection need not be about changing a negative to a positive, when needed just change the subject to doing something else if possible to "sidetrack" him. Food works great!
Hope this helps a little, I'm just learning how to handle my son myself. I'm also totally alone in this and it is murder. Best wished to you.