Hi Mark.

I was fortunate in one respect, my accident happened about a mile from St. Joseph’s hospital/Barrow’s Neurological Institute in Phoenix, which is listed annually as one of the top 10 neurological hospitals. In fact, there are more brain surgeries performed there than any other hospital in the country.

I had a craniotomy the evening of the accident which saved my life (Dr. Steve Chang). About a month after the craniotomy I was transferred from ICU to Barrow’s neuro-rehab, which is under the direction of Dr. Christina Kwasnica, whose specialty is brain injury rehabilitation. In addition to directing the staff of occupational, physical and speech therapists she personally saw me each day.

Each day in nuero-rehab consisted of at least 4 hours of therapy. Speech therapy started with such basics as what day and year it was (which I didn’t know at the start of my rehab), then as I started to get the day and year thing down, they moved me to other tasks such as sequencing and sorting problems to work on executive functions and memory. Occupational therapy included games and activities to improve coordination, problem solving and short term memory.

Another specialist I saw while there was Dr. Jennifer Wethe, who is a clinical neuropsychologist. Her role was in assessing my cognitive functioning and progress. She also did a neuropsychological evaluation upon discharge to set the direction for my outpatient therapies, gave “homework” activities to work on.

Not to sound like a PR rep for Barrow’s, but I can’t say enough good things about them. I think the key is they see TBI/PCS cases all the time, and have developed care strategies to address these injuries.

http://www.thebarrow.org/Who_We_Are/index.htm