Pcs and moving forward
 

My husband was in a MVA on 1/19/12 by going into a ditch and taking out many trees when a deer darted out in front of him. Car was totaled with no air-bag deployment. He had his seat-belt on and it was more whiplash than anything else (did not hit head in accident). All mri & ct scans were normal as well as his neck-flex test. He was an inpatient for 3 days.

About 12 days after the accident, he was seen at a special concussion unit of a Neurosurgical practice outside the trauma center where he was an inpatient . My DH wanted to go back to work and they ok'd him to go back to work on a limited schedule of only 8 hrs a day with no overtime and rest as needed. They diagnosed him with PCS. On 2/6/12 he returned to work and he said he did ok. Fatigue was expected along with short-term headaches, dizziness and forgetfulness as well as sleep issues. Today he is going on his 2nd week of work and his headaches are getting less and less along with the dizziness. He is concerned, however, with his forgetfulness.

I have read on this board, as well as investigating other online resources about PCS, (concentrating on forgetfulness and short-term memory loss) that severe forgetfulness and memory loss can include forgetting how to use a phone, remote control or being in your car and forgetting where you were going. Luckily, my DH has not experienced any of these or anything this serious.

What he has experienced is forgetting what I told him after only a couple minutes go by or, like last night, he said he would leave me the debit card and put it on the table in the morning and he totally forgot. He seemed concerned so he called the concussion clinic and they told him that this is normal and that if he wanted to, he could go for cognitive therapy and they would send a script in the mail.

With that said, it has only been a little over 3 weeks since his accident and I told him it could take up to 3-6 months for symptoms to decrease and get better. He is going to wait another 2 weeks to see how he feels before making a decision about cognitive therapy (plus we cannot afford it now).

Any/all advice would be greatly appreciated from your own personal experience(s). :Thanx:

AmyMarie,

Welcome to NeuroTalk. I am glad to hear your DH is doing so well.

His memory symptoms are totally normal. For the short term, he just needs to change how he depends on his memory. In my house, either my wife would have written a note on my white board on the refrigerator or I would have given her the debit card right then.

Delaying action to rely on short term memory is problematic. Also, it is not uncommon to have difficulties transferring memories from short term to long term. Much of this happens during sleep as the brain sorts and reorganized and indexes the previous day's events.

I bet he is still not back to his normal sleep habits completely. This would account for the memory issues.

Getting concerned about a little issue like this is counter-productive. Give him some grace to forget. If you want a higher level of memory accountability, try to share the memory load with him. Let him know you are not being critical or nagging when you remind him of things.

You also need to keep in mind that he could have forgotten this same issue without his concussion history. If he had other things on his mind when you made the request, a normal brain would tend to forget over-night.

If this becomes a frequent event, another system that helps is to ask for the request to be repeated by the person receiving the request. This needs to be agreed to by both persons as a communication aid and not a critical comment. It can be a great help to a marriage regardless of concussion history.

My best to you both.

What about cognitive therapy? I have not heard goo dthings bout it, nor any positive results. It also has only been about 3 1/2 weeks since my DH's accident. We are to be receiving a script from the Neuro for it but, we also cannot afford it at this time.

Any suggestions/thoughts on this type of therapy?

AmyMarie,

I would suggest holding off the cognitive therapy for the near term. It would be better to get settled with an understanding of his symptoms. The TBI Survival Guide at www.tbiguide.com will give you some help at identifying the individual symptoms.

With a better understanding of his symptoms, plenty of people here can give you suggestions for ways to work with and overcome many symptoms.

Learning how to work-around symptoms will allow him to engage in more activities that can slowly stimulate his brain. Then, cognitive therapy can be considered as an addition.

My best to you.

Yeah, I don't think it would be really valuable at such an early time. I'd actually be worried about it overloading his brain and delaying recovery. Rest and gradually attempting to return to normal activity as symptoms decrease would make more sense at this point. If he's not able to do this naturally within a matter of months, then I would look into cognitive therapy to help him make the transition.