I am lost with many questions
 

My daughter inlaw age 23 got into a car wreck 3 mths ago , a 16 yr old talking on cell phone turned in front of her totaling both cars. She and my grandson age 2 taken to hospital both seemed fine, she was diagnosed head concussion sent home all good right? 1 month later she is driving down a oneway street ,police take her to jail thinking she on drugs? They text her she negative .She does not remember she has a son in daycare nor much of anything . We find out when daycare calls to get my grandson, No one knew where she was? She would never leave her baby! Days later, we get a call from Mental institution she is telling these people stories , they think she has drug problem and so do we. We never seen this person living inside her body. Weeks go by til its evident she has MTBI. she is not the same, she spits on ground, she talks about things that no one understands, cities with beautiful people and lights,waffle house restaurants. Then everyone's out to kill her and come get her from the hospital. Her family came took her and baby to another

I hope her family is getting proper care for her...

Any treatment center /dr should be able to drug test to make sure that is not the case..
Or she may be self medicating (legal or illegal) due to the pain & symptoms from the TBI....

MomnLaw,

Welcome to NeuroTalk.

Has anybody done any serious neurological testing on your DIL ? Many of her behaviors can be the result of a brain injury. A drug test to rule out drugs would be good so you can get past that question. Then, it will be easier to push for a diagnosis of a physiological cause to her behaviors. A high Tesla MRI or a DTI MRI would be warranted. A 24 hour EEG might be worthwhile. She may be having seizures, absence or otherwise.

Her behavior could be a combination of an mTBI and PTSD. They tend to magnify each other.

btw, A DTI MRI is a Diffusion Tensor Imaged MRI. They are good an showing a physiological (trauma) cause to cognitive problems to rule out psychological causes. I wish I could find the MedScape article that explains this.

Hello momnlaw,
Welcome to NeuroTalk.

I'm sorry your daughter-in-law has been having such a difficult time. I hope that she can can get a correct diagnosis and ongoing treatment. Mark is correct in saying that some of the behaviours you mention could indeed by caused by a brain injury.

__________

Mark, there are a few... is this the Medscape article you mean?

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/829028
Medscape Medical News > Neurology
DTI Shows Brain Changes in Mild Head Injury
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http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/765690
Medscape Neurology
Diffusion Tensor Imaging: A New Window Into Mild TBI

Adding on Medscape Registration page if needed to view articles.
https://profreg.medscape.com/px/registration.do
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Edited to add for reference -

NIH - News Article
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/news_and_ev..._biomarker.htm
Diffusion Tensor Imaging May Improve Diagnosis and Tracking of Mild Traumatic Brain Injuries
For release: Thursday, March 4, 2010

Neither is the article I read but the first mentions a lot of the same findings.

I may have found it at NIH. But, who knows with my memory.

I just had to remember my MedScape log in to get in as deep as needed. There are some articles that do not need a log in.